Isaac Diggs digs in on the visual art KC’s soul needs today

It is 2025, and we are officially living in the future—a kind of future that had previously only been seriously entertained by professional computer scientists, philosophers, and in trippy Hollywood depictions like The Matrix Trilogy or discussed in the literature of Kafka, Huxley, Orwell, Spengler, Kaczynski, and Foucault.

Be it the rapid proliferation of generative AI, humanoids, quantum computing, recyclable rockets, global human-to-computer interaction, or economic interdependence set against a rapidly escalating global cold war, the hypotheticals of yesteryear’s most galvanizing theorists are now upon us. And so, what does that mean for humans? And more specifically, what does it mean for art?

Well, I don’t know if I have the right answers or any answers, but I’m sitting with Kansas City artist Isaac Diggs in his studio, and we’re bouncing ideas around these topics amid a conversation about his practice. And to my taste, Diggs, a 25-year-old California-born, long-time Kansas City resident, is one of our fine city’s most unique artistic gems—a veritable wizard of theory and mixed media.

Diggs’s genre-bending psychedelic, multimedia, outsider art carries a decidedly cerebral cachet that might not appeal to everyone, at least not at first, but I’d definitely encourage you to check his stuff out. Within the intermedia of his practice, Diggs incorporates elements as far-reaching as Taoism, chess, geometry, AI-driven deliberations, as well as collage work, and graphic art with a collegiate background in electrical engineering, and an interest in epistemology, hip-hop, and “the essence of natural things.” He is an artist and thinker of material breadth and depth—the creative type our present period requires.

Like Marcel Duchamp or MC Escher, Diggs’s work is, yes, art in a conventional sense. But Diggs also makes a lot of interesting stuff that blurs traditional boundaries and definitions of what art is or is not through the prism of our relentlessly bizarre phase of human history. His practice appeals to both the eye and the mind, with works involving meditative writing exercises, diagrams, symmetrical digital prints seemingly borne of Hindu-Buddhist influence, and scattered throughout his studio are illustrations, Rubik’s cubes, and sticky notes with aphorisms, and poetry, organized, interestingly enough, around the studio with geometric precision.

His Taoist and Eastern proclivities appear throughout conversation and embed themselves within his creative explorations. “My core thesis deals with the spirit and machine, which has manifested in many ways over the years,” Diggs says.

He embraces a purposeful and purposeless approach, which is also quite Zen: “There’s a sense [to my art] of just having fun. Play is something that I value a lot. There’s this idea that being childlike is a really negative thing, but the value of play is you’re allowing your subconscious to use your tools.”

Sometimes, Diggs says, he feels like he finds art instead of creating it, or at least some combination of both, abstracting it from something broader until it becomes more realized. Referring to the generation of specific works involving interlocking geometric symbols of contrasting color and implied ideological duality expressed in red and blue acrylic, “I was playing with a compass, drawing circles; [I thought]… I’ll turn it into an infinity symbol, and suddenly, it’s like ‘Wow, now I’m dealing with way more meaning.'”

And while the techno-class warfare rages on, and the accouterments of the postmodern economy are likely here to stay for the foreseeable future, Diggs muses that even by today’s standards, technological interplay still relies on human input, like any other interactive process, and that that human input results in an output—even if that output is a conglomeration of collective human input and consciousness amid massive quantities of data, such that there isn’t much in the way of metacognitive artistic control, or biologically-driven sentient inspiration undergirding these new interfaces, networks, and generative technologies artists are now forced to contend with.

Instead, Diggs cautions we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be consumed by them. “You are what you eat; Anything you consume becomes a part of who you are.” He likens our present period to a new Garden of Eden where industrial innovation has set humanity up for a new set of haunting possibilities ironically made in humanity’s begottenness and yet still somehow removed from the humane.

Art and human ingenuity remain a sacred and viable escape pod from our widespread doom, gloom, and overwhelm. But we are now in a never ending dance between science and art, and Diggs seems to be well aware of this reality. He synthesizes his aptitudes for science and the humanities with an unremitting commitment to art while embracing both hemispheres of his brain, fusing them with the poetic in an analysis of his approach to art, science, and life.

“To me, I am a scientist, and I’m just studying myself. That’s the art.”

With that in mind, it would likely do us all some good to revisit art and the origins of human knowledge and imagination and double down and cherish the certitude and necessity of self-expression in an increasingly inhumane and alienating epoch.

Visiting France or Indonesia’s historical sites may not be feasible for most to glimpse civilization long before the machines took over. In that case, you can always check out what’s happening here in the Kansas City art scenes, where there’s absolutely no shortage of dazzling artistic talent and human-centric inspiration among artists of all different disciplines, backgrounds, and approaches. Do yourself a favor and take the time to check out Isaac Diggs; You can thank me later.

For more information, see Isaac Digg’s website.