Concept Overview
Holding Signal captures a quiet collision between connection and disconnection in the digital age. Two figures—one clothed, one bare—occupy a suspended space above the city, bound together by the glow of their devices. The posture suggests both protection and paralysis: a shared screen light becomes a surrogate sun, illuminating absence as much as presence.
Morton’s signature hexagonal motifs pulse through the shirt, symbolizing the cellular network of human relationships—neural, architectural, and emotional. The geometric backdrop of skyscrapers becomes a nervous system of the city itself, echoing circuits of thought, habit, and longing.
Artist’s Note
“I wanted to paint the sensation of holding someone who isn’t really there.
The digital current hums between us, but the warmth we crave is still analog—skin, breath, pulse.
This is the nervous system of our cities: connection without contact.”
Symbolic Layers
- The Hex Pattern: Represents the shared code between neural pathways and urban grids—a fusion of organic and constructed intelligence.
- Bare Skin vs. Cloth: Embodies exposure versus protection, the emotional divide between vulnerability and social facade.
- Devices as Light Sources: Modern relics of worship, framing faces like halos while isolating them from true intimacy.
Somatic Signal™ Integration
This painting is part of Morton’s Urban Echoes subset, where Signal Somatics translates emotion into multisensory form. Collectors may experience augmented reality overlays revealing subtle light movements and ambient tones of city frequencies, bridging the visual and auditory nervous systems.
Technical Details
- Oil on gallery-wrapped canvas
- Hexagonal pigment overlays and graphite underdrawing
- Reflective medium integrated for light-sensitive response
- Artist’s brass mark embedded in lower garment fold
Category: Societal Pressure
(Explores the collective tension between presence, technology, and emotional embodiment.)
Hexaverse Poem
Signal between skin
Held but not heard.
Flesh hums with code,
Yet silence glows brighter.
I reach for warmth,
And touch light.