The Divinity Trilogy
The Divinity Trilogy presents 1,358 figures across six millennia of recorded history in three single-channel videos: The Divine Masculine (454 men), The Divine Feminine (454 women), and The Divine Immaterial (450 figures beyond binary). Each face is algorithmically keystoned to the Renaissance golden section, the pupil line fixed at the vertical coordinate where Bellini and Memling placed theirs. A Zipfian temporal distribution compresses time as it approaches the present: contemporary figures flash at a quarter-beat while ancient ones hold for four. No figure is captioned. No hierarchy is argued. The work proposes only duration as a form of attention, and attention as a form of care.
Johan Ahlm Michalove
February 2026
I. The Divine Masculine (3:00) 454 men from Wembanyama to Narmer. A South African gqom track by QUE DJ & DJ Lag asks the only question the work allows itself: Where's Your Father. The artist appears twice — once at the opening in a cigarette drag above the New York skyline, and once at the close, frozen for a single beat among the portraits before the image releases back into movement. II. The Divine Feminine (3:14) 454 women from Robin Wall Kimmerer to Inanna. The reversed Zipf order creates a deceleration effect: the video opens in the kinetic present and gradually slows into deep time, ending with the first recorded feminine figures in human history. Audio: Soundbwoy Killa by State OFFF. III. The Divine Immaterial (2:53) 450 figures beyond binary — mystics, shapeshifters, two-spirits, hijra, and those who dissolved the boundary between self and cosmos. The collection spans Loki to Elliot Page, Tiresias to Muxe elders. Audio: Immaterial by SOPHIE. Technical pipeline: MediaPipe FaceLandmarker detects iris centers via landmarks 468 and 473. A similarity transform maps detected pupils to target positions at the golden section (y = H/φ). Gaze drift shifts target positions along a Lissajous curve with irrational-ratio frequencies, creating the effect of eyes wandering across the frame. The entire trilogy was conceived, coded, and rendered in 21 hours.