WHERE ARE THE SHADOWS?

Disappearing Shadows Gouache on paper 42 x 30 cm 2024

Copyright - Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox

SPEED

There is an avalanche of both information and hype about AI, LLMs, generative AI, and associated issues such as creativity, job losses, speed, efficiency, human-machine teaming, and more. One key aspect that I pick up on is how often AI-enabled speed is viewed as an advantage. AI speed is great if a life/lives is/are in jeopardy. But, speed does not necessarily equate with efficiency, productivity, satisfaction, and creativity. Speed can kill. Speed can bypass. Speed can blind. Speed can confuse. But, gee, it can be exciting - maybe that's why we are blinded by it?

AI-enabled or assisted systems generally also rely upon signal connectivity to servers, relay points, satellites, and other systems for software updates, cloud access, digital tools, and the communication and dissemination of outcomes, and more. This adds another layer of speed - lightspeed or near lightspeed transmission of signals that enable connectivity as they carry instructions and various kinds of data. In a signal-enabled connected and interconnected world of speed, systems require standardised and synchronised protocols to meet our increasing expectations of and for speed. In an increasingly standardised and synchronised system, human involvement can slow down process speed, introducing choke points that are then deemed to require bypassing or replacement with more autonomous components. I ask, is a world built around and for beyond-human speed a one way journey to homogenised behaviour, aesthetics, and expectations... ? 

Does speed propel us forward, or are we, in fact, in free-fall? Either way, beyond-human speed erodes attention, thus eliding peripherality and laterality. In doing so, orientation to time and space is difficult, if not impossible. Maybe that is why techno-AI-hype maintains an awestruck hold, with its 'sound bites' of constant announcements about new iterations, updates, and possibilities assisting seemingly forward propulsion or accelerating free-fall. Hype may be the only way to gain even a nano-second of attention in a world of speed. 

SAMENESS

You can already see 'sameness' occurring in car design, advertising, fashion, image production, and more. Yes, Chat GPT and other generative-AI tools are major influences for this registration to the mean, but underlying much of the hype is speed of generation. If you read commentary from tech companies, marketeers, users, and wannabe artists, words like 'speed' and 'fast' pepper their scripts of excited awe. Militaries and defence departments around the world are also increasingly aware of speed in a hyperconnected world. I have written about this in a recent (2024) article 'Lightspeed, Contemporary War, and Australia's National Defence Strategic Review' in Digital War journal. 

PAINTINGS

Disappearing Shadows and Virtual Shadow visually ask questions about human-machine teaming, technology and beyond-human speed, data as a proxy for life, AGI hype, and more. The paintings are offerings from a periphery - my painting studio where no computer is involved in the process of creation. Using my creative and critical method of 'imaginational metaveillance', I use painting as a medium to reflect upon technology, speed, tech hype, and more. I use imaginational metaveillance and painting to observe in ways that can reveal patterns and behaviours that become invisible as they become normalised into speed's slipstream. 

While these paintings may appear simple, they took time. I sprayed the watercolour paper with water, then had to wait until the saturated paper was just right for me to apply the gouache paint. Yes, some of the painting was swift, but after the paintings had dried, I returned to them to accentuate certain areas, rewet others, and add some more markings. I did not apply a 'style' from a menu! 

I could write more, but I will leave it there.

Cheers, Kathryn

P.S. Links to more on imaginational metaveillance 👇 

2024: Brimblecombe-Fox, K. 2024. “Imaginational Metaveillance: Revelations in the Drone Age” in Drone Aesthetics: War, Culture, Ecology, Open Humanities Press. Eds. Beryl Pong (University of Cambridge) and Michael Richardson (University of New South Wales). 

2024: Brimblecombe-Fox, K. 2024. “Imaginational Metaveillance, Creative Painting Practice, and the Airborne Drone” in   Drones in Society: A New Visual Aesthetics, Palgrave Macmillan. Ed. Elisa Serafinelli (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK).

Virtual Shadow Gouache on paper 42 x 30 cm 2024

Copyright - Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox

GHOSTS AND SHADOWS: SEEKING PATTERNS

 

Ghosts and Shadows: Seeking Patterns Oil on linen 92 x 112cm 2024

Ghosts and Shadows: Seeking Patterns is a new painting that plays with multiple influences and issues that occupy my mind, and imagination. The visual indulgence of repetitive shapes alludes to algorithmic pattern detections that assist collection, storage, and sorting of data. Patterning also references algorithmic and AI statistical and sequencing operations across interconnected and inter-operational technologies. Patterning also alludes to synchronisation and standardisation requirements for these interconnected and inter-operational technologies to produce or generate outcomes and outputs. And, patterning also indicates how synchronisation and standardisation lead to homogenisation - aesthetic, behavioural, expectations, and more. 

Yet patterning can be quite reassuring. I have played with this sense of reassurance in Ghosts and Shadows: Seeking Patterns. However, the reassurance is a ruse. In my mind, each patterned section denotes technological capabilities, dispersed across a synchronised scape. Two MQ-28 Ghost Bat drones ambigrammatically relate to each other. Is one a shadow? Are they allied drones, or is one an enemy drone? Is one a digital twin? Both drones are painted with different patterns across their fuselages and wings. For me, this indicates the MQ-28 Ghost Bat drone's multirole capabilities within one drone, as well as across a group-swarm of drones ie: removable nose cones allow different payloads.

The background is an assortment of lines, circles, squares, rectangles, and shard-like shapes. They create a kind of landscape or skyscape, a measured environment that appears to be colourful and neutral. Are you above, below, or in front of this unusual scape? Neutrality, however, is not assured if the patterns are geolocating measures designed to guide autonomous drone flight. Are the patterns a sign that geography is algorithmically sequenced to enhance target selection? The patterns may harbor dispersed dual-use and/or latent lethality.

The softer background plays with the idea of ghosts and shadows. Maybe other worlds? Or, maybe past sorties, the drones now readied for an immanent new deployment, or on the edge of full blown attack? 

The words seeking patterns in the title of the painting is my way of indicating that while algorithms scope data for patterns, sequences, and statistical alignments or anomalies, we humans can also identify patterns - patterns of homogeneity, patterns of creeping normalisations, patterns of standardised behaviour, expectations, and more. 

As a painting, Ghosts and Shadows: Seeking Patterns exposes, but also retreats from the world of algorithms and AI. 

I'll leave you to ponder!

Cheers,

Kathryn

PS. My solo show, DRONE: Ghosts and Shadows, curated by the University of Southern Queensland Art Gallery is early next year. You can find details on the UniSQ Art Gallery site. 

PPS. Have you read my article "Light-Speed, Contemporary War, and Australia's National Defence Strategic Review" in Digital War journal? It is open access, so anyone can read it!