working title and statement
mutation | technologic terrestrials
mutation is a mirror to the emergent zeitgeists of artificial intelligence (teamed with quantum computing) and ecology. It refreshes discourses that the two are divergent priorities. As dialectics have critiqued human-nature relationships, they have done so using the same perceptual structures that have hindered both. This body of work entangles the natural world within the technologic and the technologic within the natural. It folds into eco-futurisms of the liminal synthesis of technology-into-nature, meshing animate systems of intelligence.
As an ongoing genesis of a statement and title, I have written this short form condensed statement for accessible reflection. In this statement, I am exploring a potential convergence point of priorities within contemporary society that oscillates from the unstable to the stable, moving at present like a worm-hole of speculative futurisms and imagined dystopia's seemingly day-by-day, moment by moment.
Advances in our technologic abilities as a species are disconnected by dualistic reasoning from the terrestrial biosphere through media, academia, fiction, boardrooms, governance, sciences, and the arts. As I've evolved my research and reasoning to propose some sort of cooperative entanglement, I've done so with the belief that the survival of ever more delicate global biosphere, will require our species to acknowledge that the maladaptive responses to ecological crisis and technological evolution are born from cyclic echoes in the past. My hope in this body of work -- part of an established thematic presence in my practice -- is that through divergence from anthropocentric predominance, will emerge anew a planetary web of recognised sentience, agency, and participation in biospheric stewardship.
The crux bonding these possibilities: multitudes of artificial intelligence toolkits embedded within quantum computing systems. This work is a nudge to concession's already underway as we approach a point of acknowledging computational abilities transcending individual and collective peoples. This body of work will examine intelligence, perception, sentience, the technologic, and the ecologic. It does so to posit eco-futurism to realignment from chaotic anthropocentrism: learning from nature, caring for nature, and balancing our needs as a species into harmonisation with our planet.
proposed outcomes
The work will be represent ecologically diverse depictions of Australian landscapes. I will use moving and still imagery captured digitally and with a medium format film. I wish to expand my works into visual spectrums outside of normal human eyesight, through infrared film and positing vision through non-human means. This still imagery will be developed with GAN AI to create a series of synchronistic moving landscapes. I am considering presenting the still-imagery in both printed form and as an expansion of still imagery to moving image on screen installations.
I would like to explore developing my past use LiDAR technology to scan natural objects and phenomena for digital holographic projection within a sculptural rendering of a tesseract. At present I see the tesseract will use Australian natural materials, inspired by the organic materiality and forms used by Valentin Loellmann. The outer cube frame will be hewn from timber, the inner cube will be a solid mass filled with an organic substance, which the imagery is projected into.
I will create a series of poems in short form that tap into the language of the ecological and technologic, showing how that in turn affects perception. This language will be evolutionary, using neologisms to enhance the eco-futuristic praxis. I would like to develop a series of short stories, around planetary-technologic integration or communication between animate systems of intelligence. I see their presentation in a series of small screens presenting a synthesis of liminal and latent spaces. Terms that are interconnected in that a latent space represents a subunit of technological processing within systems. These poems will explore machine-learning and language adaptation synchronising with themes of intelligence.
All moving image pieces and scans will be integrated with audio recordings. The audio recordings I see as an opportunity to collaborate with voice artists to produce sound pieces that explore verbal communication as inspired by landscape. There will be recordings of the landscape rendered through GAN AI systems to redevelop sound through machine minds.
My essay will act to inform on my research, and be presented as part of the final installation in a zine form. At this stage, I imagine using the essay as an exploration of thinking backed from formal academic forms. However, I would like it to show language evolution throughout the essay, heuristic communications of technologic coding or binary, still-imagery, and integrate opportunities for readers to explore augmented realities. The text of the essay and its' presentation in zine form I see as a expanded field guide to eco-futurisms, may be physically expandable as if it were a series of maps.
