Ingestion Transformer
We can identify the meaning of an image in 13 milliseconds. Photographic images are the visual communication currency of our time, and influence us because of the psychological associations we have with with the content. I’m playing with the relative power of images and how we “digest” them by making them literally edible. I’m also playing with the common practice of mistaking the image for the actual thing it represents. I surveyed friends on social media as to what images are emotional triggers for them - hospitals, white power rallies, homeless shelters, cancer, exhaust pipes, guns, the twin towers, etc. I do a Google image search for the word and then choose the image that when cropped seems to have the most visual interest. The image is then printed with (FDA-approved) edible ink onto edible paper made of potato starch. During the exhibition I print out two copies of the image and I eat the image with the person who has told me their trigger. This is a play on religious communion and also the idea in modern psychology (exposure therapy) that when you expose yourself to emotional triggers repeatedly in a safe environment they lose their power to affect you.
Kevin Hoth is an artist, father, and educator based in Boulder, Colorado. He has taught university courses in photography, digital media and graphic design at numerous universities for over twenty years. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Media Production in the department of Critical Media Practices at CU Boulder. Hoth’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at The Houston Center for Photography, The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The Center for Fine Art Photography, The Institute of Photographic Studies of Catalonia in Barcelona, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, The Photographic Center Northwest, The Center for Creative Photography, The Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, and The Rhode Island Center for Photography. Recent awards include Top 200 Critical Mass 2025, Center For Fine Art Photography Center Forward 2024, and top ten finalist for the 2018 Clarence John Laughlin Award. Hoth received his Masters of Fine Art in Photography at the University of Washington, Seattle with a focus in Video Installation. He lives on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado and regularly gets woken up by coyote howls, owl hoots and horse whinnies. Kevin is represented by Walker Fine Art in Denver, Colorado.