Lu Bassett is an artist-researcher operating an interdisciplinary practice that spans long-form painting, video, narrative world-building, and interactive computational systems. Currently based in Calgary, Alberta, my work explores the physical and digital boundaries of memory, affect, and structural traces.
[pixel::press] → [path::play]
I am an artist-researcher working at the intersection of painting, video, and creative technology. My practice explores digital entropy, material decay, and cross-media transformation. Rather than optimizing for the flawless, high-definition perfection of contemporary culture, I build systems that exploit the beauty within technical breakdown. I am drawn to the historical evidence left behind by a signal in transit—whether that signal is a corrupted video frame, an over-compressed file, or the random, physical residue of paint in a studio.
At the core of my work is transduction: the deliberate process of converting energy, data, or media from one form into another. I treat media as a fluid state, radical format-shifting across digital and physical boundaries. I open image files inside audio software to map their sonic textures; I write custom code to translate flat photographs into tactile, 3D-printed haptic reliefs; and I utilize live webcam threshold data to transform the velocity of the human body into a virtual paintbrush. In the studio, this manifests as Linewrapping—a systematic painting method where I painstakingly delineate and stabilize the chaotic, accidental pigments scraped from old brushes, turning background noise into the central subject.
To anchor these explorations, I employ a structured methodology called REED (Recorded Experiential and Environmental Documentation). When a project is tied to a specific human context, I treat the environment as an active data source, capturing process logs, raw text fragments, and environmental metadata. Because memory is fragile and digital systems automate so much of our lives, these logs serve as co-equal records of an encounter.
Ultimately, my work is an interrogation of lossy systems. By pushing compression algorithms, datamoshing, and material decay to their absolute limits, I break static frames into ruptured animations and artifacts. These interventions prove that glitches and noise are not errors to be corrected. They are archival proof of transit—reframing the breakdown of a system as a vital, generative space where real human presence refuses to be automated away.