Ryan Whittier Hale’s work Lone Monolith (2014), a 1:30 minute HD digital video, presents the viewer with a deserted yet beautiful landscape. A withering ruin is the only evidence life ever existed in this fictional landscape. In this work the artist challenges the contemporary fashion to form an ever growing dependency on technology as a medium for connection and communication.

Hale's work questions to what extent we are willing to invest emotionally in these virtual realities? It speaks to the inevitability that we are becoming more and more attached to using avatars, that serve as surrogate selves who mediate our human interactions. And it poses the further inquiry; are we becoming acclimated to a reduced intensity of human intimacy?

Lone Monolith questions what has become of intimacy and emotional connection? The work stands as a testament to a virtual world devoid of life as we know it, where humans no longer feel the need to gather and interact.

Both Lone Monolith and Shifting Landscape are created as infinite loops exclusively for Sedition.

Ryan Whittier Hale currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.