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).
Copyright - Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox
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