DEEP FAKE, Curator’s Statement Isabel Beavers

DEEP FAKE

When I was approached by Julia Butaine Hoel to guest curate an exhibition for Sci Art Initiative I had recently learned about neural lacing. The possibility of an artificial material being placed inside the human brain for the purpose of digital connectivity felt absurd but also like an immense leap forward. How did we get here? I became intensely interested in the subtle and invisible ways artificially intelligent materials and bodies had already infiltrated the limits of our minds and barriers of our bodily organs.

The submissions that came through the open call were exciting and ranged in artistic mediums and geographies including Denmark, Brazil, The Netherlands, South Korea, Australia and the United States. It felt prescient to recognize that the threats, possibilities, and realities we face in relationship to AI and machine learning are common worldwide despite the many different sociopolitical contexts we inhabit. The works selected for DEEP FAKE present many distinct observations, critiques and queries about AI. A number of works made connections between United States politics, the Trump administration specifically, and the free-wheeling dissemination of mis-information. Janna Avner presents a painting ‘TFW Sick of Fake News’ that depicts a domineering, clownish white house, the threat of viral misinformation looming darkly in the sky. This work, this year, felt particularly relevant. Jeroen van Loon comments on the proceedings between the tech giant Facebook and the US Congress. He runs the recorded trials through snapchat filters that add sunglasses, cowboy hats, money GIFs, and hearts overtop the main characters. Chris Combs’ work ‘Naked Mueller‘ occupies a 3-ring binder, with text-based content generated from an AI trained on the Mueller Report. These works ask: how do machine learning technologies exponentially speed up the spread of viral mis-information? How is our democracy threatened when bad actors intersect with sophisticated AI?

Some artists lean towards the imaginary capacities of AI. How can AI algorithms generate new information, images, and symbols? How does this newness inscribe new potential histories, or rewrite old ones? Artist Tyler Bohm’s sculptural ‘Generative UN’ includes aigenerated flags of imaginary nations. Destabilizing the notion of national symbols, the work also suggests an alternative world in which our current nations, borders, and conflicts do not apply. Liliana Farber’s prints ‘Terram in Aspectu’ depict AI-generated islands. Farber trained an AI on historic maps of fake islands once believed to exist, but that have since been proven not to. Henry Brown creates landscape images generated from procedural environments in video game worlds. The uncanny sites feel familiar. They resemble the work of the Hudson River School in scale and composition; yet, upon close inspection the digitalness of the spaces become apparent. Glitches in the environment emerge as one’s sense of truth is dismantled.

The works that I was particularly struck by achieved a complexity of concept and process that present conflicting and opposing ideas at once. The artists Dr. Samir Bhowmik and Jukka Hautamaki created two complimentary works ‘Panic Breeder’ and ‘Machina Baltica.’ Both take inspiration from the ecological degradation of the Baltic Sea. ‘Panic Breeder’ utilizes an AI trained on bird species from the Baltic Sea, generating new breeds of avian speciesthat could emerge from the present. Can we place our fears and anxieties around the climate crisis in future imaginaries? In contrast, ‘Machina Baltica’ is settled in the present. Incorporating found objects and materials from the Baltic Sea it operates as an artifact, a fossil, a specimen frozen in time. Its semblance of a skull reminds us of our own immortality, and how we are linked to the fate of many species.

‘Current’ is an epic and layered volumetric cinema work. The investigations in AI optimization, volumetric cinema, personalized narrative and infinite livestream come together in fluid and dextrous imagery. Created by Eli Joteva, Provides Ng, Artem Koneskivkh, and Ya Nzi, the work questions the future of volumetric cinema as much as it does our agency in relation to emerging artificially intelligent technologies. Are we in control of our own livestreams? What happens to resources, environments and spaces under the constant gaze of surveillance? Is a new economy of exchange possible in this current of digital surveillance, reproduction, and streaming? Have we already been swept away?

--Isabel Beavers, Curator