retail orbitals
Video, 2025
About the artwork
Lately, my work has turned toward the tension between memory and fabrication. I’ve been using machine hallucinations to reconstruct what’s missing, lost realities, unrealized thoughts, and emotional debris. Rather than seeking clarity, I’m interested in how AI misremembers, how it speculates. I’ve leaned into that failure, letting the system act less as a tool and more as a flawed collaborator, one that simulates recollection but never lands on truth. This recent body of work isn’t concerned with clean representation; it’s about dislocation, synthetic memory, and the emotional charge of things that feel remembered, even when they never were.
Sound design by Frank Manzano
Audio explanation
Listen to Frank Manzano discuss this work.
Frank Manzano, based in Chicago, is an artist focusing on abstract and conceptual digital compositions, with formal training in film and photography from Columbia College. His work delves into the exploration of shared societal symbols and aims to unravel the individual connections people forge with these symbols.
Manzano embraces the idea that moments of revelation can arise from idleness and boredom, a belief he consistently incorporates into his creative process. His artistic ambition centers around deciphering the symbols that define our culture, using contemporary digital mediums to articulate these foundational emblems. Through his artwork, Frank Manzano seeks to inspire viewers to embark on introspective journeys, encouraging them to scrutinize their personal relationships with the symbols that shape their existence.