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!