
(SKETCH) Phone Drop Test (touching grass series)
(2025)
A daily series on Rodeo.club.
In PHONE DROP TEST (Touching Grass 001-xxx), each shattered screen is a fractured portal to the world we've been scrolling past. Starting with my own archive of broken screen photographs as seeds (reinterpreted with AI) has naturally expanded as collectors began sharing their personal artifacts of digital destruction, creating a collective meditation on our mediated reality.
My process merges traditional photography with AI interpretation, revealing both how machines see through these broken barriers and how our digital interfaces mediate and limit our experience of reality. Starting with an archive of my own broken safety glass photographs as seeds, I use AI to explore how machines 'see' through these fractured lenses, much like how our phones increasingly interpret and process our visual world. The resulting images are neither purely photographic nor purely artificial, but exist in the same hybrid space where most contemporary image-making now lives. This process echoes how modern smartphones capture images through a complex interaction of optical lenses and computational photography, acknowledging and exposing that layered relationship between human vision, mechanical capture, and digital interpretation.
The series deliberately employs Rodeo's social platform as both medium and message, where each broken screen, captured as a social media post, creates a recursive commentary. As artists and collectors began privately sharing photographs of their own shattered devices, the project evolved into a participatory artwork. Released during Rodeo's explosive growth and its FOMO-driven collecting frenzy, these daily drops gain additional resonance in the platform's endless scroll. The very act of collecting these moments of digital destruction becomes part of the performance. In invoking the digital vernacular of 'touching grass,' the series transforms this internet imperative into a visual meditation on the boundaries between digital immersion and physical reality.

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 001)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 002)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 003)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 004)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 005)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 006)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 007)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 008)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 009)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 010) w @dubhz0

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 011)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 012)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 013)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 014) w @shane

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 015)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 016)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 017)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 018)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 019)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 020)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 021)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 022)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 023)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 024)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 025)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 026)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 027)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 028)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 029)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 030)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 031)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 032)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 033)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 034)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 035)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 036)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 037)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 038)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 039)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 040)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 041)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 042)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 043)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 044)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 045)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 046)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 047)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 048)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 049)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 050)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 051)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 052)

Phone Drop Test (Touching Grass 053)