Watching: Digital Smoke

Overview

Digital Smoke is an experimental meditation on light, memory, and distortion. Shot at twilight in Minneapolis’s Loring Park, the film captures the moment just after sunset, when street lamps flicker on and reflect across the lake. As Devereaux moves the camera backward and forward, fading light introduces digital noise. Rather than correct it, he amplifies the imperfection, layering light trails until the noise becomes ethereal white clouds—“digital smoke”—that dissolve the boundary between image and abstraction. Frames evoke the hazy textures of J.M.W. Turner and the pixelated aesthetic of early video games, blending painterly romanticism with digital fragmentation.