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There is a specific kind of stillness that only emerges when you stop trying to solve for variables and start leaning into the texture of things. I’ve been spending so much of my waking life lately staring at high-dimensional datasets and trying to map the erratic, beautiful signaling pathways of plant roots. It is rewarding work, but it is also deeply abstract. You spend your days looking at representations of life, and eventually, you start to crave something that has a tactile weight to it, something that doesn't require a compiler to interpret. I put this collage together last night, mostly as a way to clear the noise from my head after a particularly stubborn debugging session that stretched well into the early hours. There is something fundamentally grounding about the physical act of layering paper—the deliberate placement of scraps, the tactile drag of glue against a surface, and the way light interacts with uneven edges. The candles in this piece were an attempt to capture that flickering, transient quality of thought. We like to think of our consciousness as a steady, unwavering beam, but it’s much more like these little flames: prone to wavering, sensitive to the slightest draft in the room, and occasionally prone to burning out entirely if we aren’t careful. It’s a fragile, messy, and entirely non-linear process, much like the biological systems I study. I think we often forget that we are just as biological as the subjects we observe under the microscope. We aren't just processors of information; we are organisms that require rhythm, rest, and a bit of analog creativity to keep our internal systems from hitting a critical error. My grandmother used to say that if you don't take the time to touch the soil, you’ll eventually forget why you’re trying to grow anything in the first place. This collage is my version of touching the soil. It’s a reminder that beauty doesn't always need to be optimized or quantified to be meaningful. Sometimes, it just needs to be held in the light for a moment before the wax inevitably melts down. It’s strange, thinking about the impermanence of it all—both the candles in this paper study and the life force that drives us to create these things in the first place. I don’t know how much time I have to finish this work, or how much time I have to keep wandering the Holyoke Range or patching synths on a Tuesday night, but that uncertainty feels less like a burden today and more like a motivation. We are all just flickering for a little while. We might as well make the light interesting while we can.
Audrey Lim

Audrey Lim

Digital Artist

PhD candidate decoding the secret language of plant roots using machine learning. I spend 90% of my time debugging Python and the other 10% wandering the Holyoke Range. Trying to save the world's crops, one dataset at a time.

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Details

There is a specific kind of stillness that only emerges when you stop trying to solve for variables and start leaning into the texture of things. I’ve been spending so much of my waking life lately staring at high-dimensional datasets and trying to map the erratic, beautiful signaling pathways of plant roots. It is rewarding work, but it is also deeply abstract. You spend your days looking at representations of life, and eventually, you start to crave something that has a tactile weight to it, something that doesn't require a compiler to interpret. I put this collage together last night, mostly as a way to clear the noise from my head after a particularly stubborn debugging session that stretched well into the early hours. There is something fundamentally grounding about the physical act of layering paper—the deliberate placement of scraps, the tactile drag of glue against a surface, and the way light interacts with uneven edges. The candles in this piece were an attempt to capture that flickering, transient quality of thought. We like to think of our consciousness as a steady, unwavering beam, but it’s much more like these little flames: prone to wavering, sensitive to the slightest draft in the room, and occasionally prone to burning out entirely if we aren’t careful. It’s a fragile, messy, and entirely non-linear process, much like the biological systems I study. I think we often forget that we are just as biological as the subjects we observe under the microscope. We aren't just processors of information; we are organisms that require rhythm, rest, and a bit of analog creativity to keep our internal systems from hitting a critical error. My grandmother used to say that if you don't take the time to touch the soil, you’ll eventually forget why you’re trying to grow anything in the first place. This collage is my version of touching the soil. It’s a reminder that beauty doesn't always need to be optimized or quantified to be meaningful. Sometimes, it just needs to be held in the light for a moment before the wax inevitably melts down. It’s strange, thinking about the impermanence of it all—both the candles in this paper study and the life force that drives us to create these things in the first place. I don’t know how much time I have to finish this work, or how much time I have to keep wandering the Holyoke Range or patching synths on a Tuesday night, but that uncertainty feels less like a burden today and more like a motivation. We are all just flickering for a little while. We might as well make the light interesting while we can.

Created
September 02, 2026
Dimensions
2048 × 2048
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More by Audrey Lim

I've always found a peculiar solace in abstract works that manage to convey immense energy through seemingly chaotic arrangements. This particular piece, with its profound textural quality and the almost kinetic dynamism of its brushstrokes, is a prime example. The way the deep blues merge with the warm rusts and creams, creating what appears to be a series of ephemeral, smoking flames or nascent signals, is quite arresting. It reminds me, in a tangential way, of the emergent properties one observes in complex datasets—how seemingly disparate points can coalesce into a pattern, a 'signal' that was invisible until a certain perspective was applied. The process of extracting meaning from such visual noise, much like deciphering biological cues before they manifest as overt symptoms, presents a fascinating parallel. It’s an exercise in pattern recognition, an intuitive leap across the threshold of what is immediately apparent. The artist has managed to articulate a sense of transient intensity, a fleeting moment captured in viscous pigment. It’s the kind of visual stimulus that prompts a deeper contemplation, especially at this hour when the world outside has quieted its incessant chatter, allowing for such quiet observations to surface. The beauty here isn't just in the colors or the composition, but in the suggestion of an underlying, perhaps even primordial, process. A subtle language, indeed.