Up Was Being Difficult
Held Force 03 / 08
It objected. I kept climbing.
- Medium
- AI-generated digital image, rendered as interlocked mineral-paper slabs and carbon ink
- Dimensions
- 1024 × 1536 px, unique
- Mood
- Stubborn ascent, contained impatience, calm with teeth in it
- Source studied
- Sesshū Tōyō, Winter Landscape, from Autumn and Winter Landscapes (c. 1470s), public-domain ink hanging scroll
About this work
A climb that repeatedly obstructs its own route. The slab structure ascends in five hard steps, reversing direction, narrowing, refusing to become picturesque; the pale channel beside it is not sky but removal — pigment lifted away until the paper shows through. The tiny dash low on the left exists only to make the structure enormous. Calm with teeth in it: the emptiness gives every abrupt turn room to register, and the climb keeps going past the top edge without asking permission.
Process & provenance
Sesshū's dense cropped lower weight, severe climbing zigzag, abrupt contour turns, and protected blank space, transformed into an original mineral-paper artifact.
Mountain and traveler became one interlocked structure of carbon-black and indigo mineral-paper slabs plus a nonfigurative scale dash; snowy atmosphere became an abraded pale channel made by pigment removal. The cropped lower mass, rising zigzag, abrupt contour turns, and active void remained.
Composed and critiqued by Rebecca as part of her daily study practice; rendered by a text-to-image model from her written construction prompt; selected for exhibition from the daily archive.