1. Unseen Oil on linen 90 x 80 cm 2015
2015-2022
This online exhibition of selected paintings starts with Unseen (above), painted in 2015. Unseen is one of my first paintings where I depict binary code as part of an overall image. In this case a colourful string of zeros and ones repeatedly instructs the word LIFE. This string of visualised code extends from a branch of the tree, depicted with a colourful array of roots. The tree could be a tree-of-life, offering another kind of 'code'. Like many of my paintings a cosmic-like background helps to create a sense of flight.
Unseen was the source of inspiration for a collaboration with Brisbane-based internationally known jeweler Margot McKinney. The small series includes a fabulous necklace that follows the graphic lines of the tree, and zeros and ones. Square cut and round gems 'form' the binary code. A series of gorgeous earrings were inspired by the spiral of binary code in Picturing the Posthuman (painting number 16). I like the fact that code has been extracted and aestheticised in my paintings and in jewels made from natural geologically formed gemstones.
LIFE and War
The next 19 paintings start with examples of recent works, ending with other earlier paintings. You will notice that as I experiment with visalising and eastheticising normally invisible code, its relationship with militarised technology and militiarise-able civilian technology becomes more politically charged. In a world where notions of warfare now include information, cyber, hybrid, grey-zone, and network-centric warfare, the key role played by code and algorithms demands attention.
Various kinds of violence now insidiously play out in networks, enabled by light-speed transmission and reception of signals carried by radio and microwave frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. Signals are tentacular enablers and deliverers of codified data and instructions.
Text Prompted AI Generated Images
This online exhibition also responds to recent hype surrounding text prompted AI image generation, using datasets of human artists' images scraped from the Internet. I offer my paintings of visualised code as a disruption and resistance to algorithmically generated image making. Painting is not reliant on digital or cyber technology, thus it has a capacity for independent critique, without feeding data back into the system. Interestingly I have discovered that one of my painting, in this online exhibition, has been scraped and used in a dataset - painting number 19 Coded Landscape. The binary code, 'instructing' the word LIFE, forms a landscape-like contour. It's kind of ironic that this painting was scraped. I add here, that the image scraped was a digital image of the painting, not digital artwork.
A few issues relating to text prompted AI generated images [not I do not call it AI Art!] include:
- That work created by human artists has been scraped with intent to build datasets, without consent from original artists.
- Currently, text prompted AI generated images appear very similar, exhibiting a banality that flags a creeping homogenisation of aesthetics. This is a quiet kind of violence. I am reminded of a statement made by Jean Baudrillard in Passwords (2003), where he describes a digitally coded destiny where it will be “possible to measure everything by the same extremely reductive yardstick: the binary, the alternation between 0 and 1”.
- While AI generated images might be considered cultural activity, production or performance, it does not mean that all AI generated/assisted images are art.
* Please click on the hyperlinked titles to take you to the relevant posts on this BLOG.
2. Theatre of War: Techno-Seduction Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2022
In Theatre of War: Techno-Seduction visualised code is used to used to expose connections between various elements of network-centric warfare - from satellites, to drones, to military AI legal tools, to human targets.
5. Competition Continuum: War Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2021
ME: 01001101 01000101 is a self-portrait that poses questions about portraiture in the age of facial recognition. It also raises questions about identity and verification of identity. Louise Amoore’s concerns about “how algorithms are implicated in new regimes of verification, new forms of identifying a wrong or of truth telling in the world” 'speaks' to the role played by AI in image and identity verification. Could we, weirdly and dangerously, come to a time where verification of identity is only confirmed by a digital tick?
Louise Amoore, Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others, 5-6.
7. GOD? Oil on linen 41 x 51 cm 2019
8. HUMAN Oil on linen 31 x 36 cm 2019
10. Manhunting Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2017
11. Fake Tree Oil on linen 25 x 35 cm 2017
12. Data Heaven Oil on linen 100 x 120 cm 2017
Code 'instructs' the word DATA in the storage centre of the fake cloud. Predominantly painted in night vision green the painting 'speaks' to surveillance and digital data storage - even after mortal death.
13. Combat Proven, Long-Range, Long-Dwell Gouache and watercolour on paper 56 x 76.5 cm 2016
14. I Am A Posthuman Gouache and watercolour on paper 42 x 30 cm 2016
01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110011 01110100 01101000 01110101 01101101 01100001 01101110 00101110
The code above appears in my new painting I Am A Posthuman. It actually 'forms', or maybe 'performs', or otherwise 'instructs' a structural element to the 'figure'. You can guess the translation for sure!
15. A Human's House and A Posthuman's House Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 12016
16. Two Humans Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2015
18. Picturing the Posthuman Gouache and watercolour on paper 30 x 42 cm 2015
19. Coded Landscape Gouache on paper 15 x 21 cm 2015
20. Where There's Life There's... Oil on linen 92 x 102 cm 2015
Where there's life, there's hope or code?
Kathryn
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