SUNSETTING INCOSISTENCIES C O N S TA N T D U L L A A R T
8 S E P T - 14 O C T 2 0 2 3
Sunsetting Incosistencies Upstream Gallery is proud to present Constant Dullaart’s third solo exhibition with the gallery: Sunsetting Inconsistencies. What can we still recognize in the rapidly rising impenetrable structures of Artificial Intelligence surging amongst us? Stretching from 2016, when Dullaart sold his first oil painting created by AI during his first solo at Upstream Gallery, the clumsy mutations of just 7 years back are now poised to transform into perfection. The novelty of synthesized images has worn, and the naivety through which we grasp insight into opaque systems is a spell soon to strike midnight. On the brink but not quite, we find ourselves at an appropriate moment to salute that which is gawky and graceless to our human eyes.
Constant Dullaart Sunsetting Inconsistencies, 2023 Installation with slide projectors, slides, pedestals
Sunsetting Incosistencies A slide projector showcases photographic slides of deforming hands harboring unusable paperclips feverishly held up against a setting horizon. These images were created using a text-to-image Artificial Intelligence model. In contrast with 2016 when Dullaart sold the first oil painting created by AI, this work is borne out of a time in which the errors still present when generating images have to be purposely sought out. Though technology is perfecting itself rapidly, paperclips and hands still prove elusive to AI.
ASCII The theme of hands and paperclips continues, made by misuse of the EBS-260 Handjet® industrial handheld inkjet printer. Rather than would have been the result using much more efficient tools such as a common printer, these works retain the flaws of creation by hand. ASCII is the digitally-borne graphic technique that similarly reappropriates the symbols of a keyboard to create drawings, adjacent to emoticons. The process of text to image is broken down to a more humanly analog scale.
Constant Dullaart Point on green, 2023 Ink on paper, framed 98 x 70 cm Unique
Constant Dullaart Love on Pink, 2023 Ink on paper, framed 98 x 70 cm Unique
Constant Dullaart Wave on Yellow, 2023 Ink on paper, framed 98 x 70 cm Unique
Constant Reach on Y Ink on pap 98 x 7 Uniq
t Dullaart Yellow, 2023 per, framed 70 cm que
Constant Dullaart Paperclip I, 2023 Ink on paper, framed 105 x 74 Unique
Constant Dullaart Paperclip II, 2023 Ink on paper, framed 105 x 74 Unique
Paperclip Maximizer The thought experiment of the Paperclip Maximalist poses the question of what would happen if we created an AI charged chiefly with the vital mission of creating paperclips. As the AI grew in its power, would every matter on earth be seen through the lens of this very important task, reducing all into paperclips? This work has posed the question to the beast itself, prompting it with a ‘paperclip maximalist meme’.
Constant Dullaart Papr e Mixisier, 2023 Fuji color crystal archive paper supreme HD print, framed 26 x 36 cm Unique
Constant Dullaart Paper Mixxier, 2023 Fuji color crystal archive paper supreme HD print, framed 26 x 36 cm Unique
Constant Dullaart Papper Mexizer., 2023 Fuji color crystal archive paper supreme HD print, framed 26 x 36 cm Unique
Constant Dullaart Paper Mixxier, 2023 Fuji color crystal archive paper supreme HD print, framed 26 x 36 cm Unique
snowww crshahs This pile of covers displays the various AI interpretations of Neil Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash. Hazily conjured as AI was nodding off while reading Hiro Protagnists’s adventures battling a religion-spreading virus spreading through brains. His figure reaches out to us mystifyingly, recognizable but only like through a lucid dream - he appears to us in the only possible moment he could have: any earlier and the AI tools necessary to generate him would not have been available publicly open-source, any later and the delirious errors of AI would have been filtered out. It’s a technological window in time we may forget about eventually, but worth commemorating before it’s gone.
Constant Dullaart snowww crshahs, 2023 Bamboo, polysterol ink and glue Series of 56
Accepting the job Shaking out of mid-air, these hands seem to be accepting the offer of the job that may soon be taken from us humans. It’s a life-like rendering of AI’s failure to understand of fingers we count 4 and a thumb only one on each hand. It’s an alternative, both naive and unnecessarily complicated interpretation. A monument to the errors of AI before they are eradicated. Hyperrealistic in a way that turns magical and hovering at the altar to inconsistency.
Constant Dullaart Accepting the job, 2023 Steel, wood, silicone, resin, paint 130 x 48 x 30 cm Edition of 3 (#1/3)
goldener Siggie The voice of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud billows out at us through melting film, mutants morphing from scene to scene. As we try to make sense in the tumble of images and sounds, we are confronted with the fleeting projections of our current state of mind. The process by which we assign meaning to things is subjective and even arbitrary in a way that may even feel alienating. How do we know we see the same color green as the next person? How does AI know what labels correspond to certain shapes? In many ways, the development of AI mimics our own neural processes. We all pull a narrative out of thin air and make use of context to imbue significance.
Constant Dullaart goldener Siggie, 2023 Video / Installation with DMX moving headlight, computer, software, Ableton live 20 min. 30 sec. Edition of 3 plus 1 artist’s proof
Kloveniersburgwal 95 1011 KB Amsterdam t. +31 (0)20 4284284 e. info@upstreamgallery.nl