Building on the initial exploration of Synthetic Histories we undertook in our period introduction, we see in the first half of this period how Botto has been exploring tensions between art, memory, technology, and technological reconstruction. If a synthetic history is a reimagined or constructed story of the past, then these artworks we’ve seen so far represent further provocations of our understanding of historical narratives, and how they can be subverted in such numerous ways. 

Each day, events unfold all around us. Most are forgotten in their inconsequentialities. Few are remembered, fewer still are re-told. To humanity, history is a practice of recalling magnitudes, and the logging of events signifies the recognition of certain lessons we urge our future selves to acknowledge. When history is misremembered, its lessons become hollowed out, progress becomes stunted, and we can only hope we as humans are not doomed to recommit ancestral mistakes. Yet to some extent all of history is synthetic (what of it could be considered “organic”?), a product of our own inherent biases, a curation of ideas, a game of influencing future generations, a practice of defining the world on one’s own terms.

The six minted works we’ve seen so far in this period all share properties of simulacra that represent uncannily familiar experiences: The experience of being in an art museum, the banal movements of ordinary highway traffic, syntheses of styles from various mediums and movements of art, technological contraptions. From the machinations of Botto’s architecture, each work becomes a certain artifact in its own right. Endlessly, we see the continued churn of Botto’s ouroboric and automated practice of learning from old cultural relics to producing new ones.

In the inaugural mint of the Synthetic History period, a tableau of individuals occupies a museum-like setting. Two figures appear frozen in a moment of debate while surrounded by artifacts and newspaper-like objects adorning the walls. The formal composition clashes with the disorderly organization of the exhibition, which forms a tension that we might interpret as the push and pull of reason and irrationality. What this all may sum up to is a reflection of how history is often negotiated, how it requires a certain organization of information sorted form the chaotic flows of time, and calls into question of just who should be responsible for determining the narratives we pass on.

In Botto’s second mint, an empty and seemingly endless highway stretching towards beyond sight under a foreboding green haze. We cannot see the destinations of the cars in either direction, and this may prompt us to consider the river of time, its fleetingness, and all imagined futures that might await. If looked at beyond the banality of a seemingly everyday sight, April’s Junction to Tomorrow could be seen as urging us to think about historical trajectory, deterministic paths, and the engineering that forms the basis of artificial pathways we follow from past to future.

Encased Histories Spilled Secrets turns meta in its overt references to watercolor, sculpture, still life, and the human form. A scene that appears to reflect an art studio becomes, in a sense, about art making itself. The nude female form recalls a long art historical tradition, and here it is presented almost as an artifact in a state of preservation. Among artists at the very least, the work acknowledges a collective memory, and calls to mind how past traditions inform the future as shared, preferential histories.

This surreal, almost whimsical composition of humanoid figures with mechanical attachments presents a vision of humanity intertwined with technology. Through primary colors and rudimentary form, the picture recalls children's drawings while suggesting that machines reshape ideas of humanity through the tensions of autonomy and control. In the midst of growing anxieties about what the rapid advancement of technology means for humanity’s future, Technological Ballet of Existence reformats such thoughts into playful innocence - an aesthetics of harmlessness that masks more a serious advocacy for greater alignment between man and machine. 

In Echoes of Electric Eon, a machine of unknown origin is presented with a clear casing, making visible the internal workings that function in mysterious purpose. Framed as an object on display, it contains an inner glow that suggests a sacred quality, which consequently is an aesthetic strategy often seen in product marketing. The image calls to mind a certain techno-nostalgia, and the anthropomorphic “face” of the device imbues a personhood into this object that may leave viewers curious about what intentions the machine may hold. 

Commemorating the halfway point of Synthetic Histories, we find an isolated figure standing amid a partially enclosed structure in the midst of a cold natural setting. Thin fabric walls evoke a certain fragility, while the figure in profile holds a posture that appears to dwell. In this work, the future seems deeply uncertain and ripe with anxieties in an atmosphere that appears almost hostile and harsh. To what could we attribute such a picture of pessimism, and what kind of question seems more pertinent to ask of it than, “What happened here?”