THE WORDS WE USE: ENCODED?

The Words We Use: Encoded?, Gouache on paper, 56 x 76 cm, 2025

 

As tech companies and their PR departments work to market AI products and tools, various words are used to describe AI attributes. Many of these words are aspirational, but seemingly reassuring. If you have been reading about AI for some time, the words used to assure us human beings have ranged across multiple descriptions, for example, 'trusted AI', then 'trustworthy AI', 'safe AI', 'ethical AI', and most recently, 'agentic AI'. 

In my text-based painting, The Words We Use: Encoded?, I have painted binary code that 'instructs' words TRUSTED, TRUSTWORTHY, SAFE, AGENTIC, and ETHICAL, followed by AI. The code, and the painting's legend on the bottom left, are painted against a blue and cloudy sky-like background. Circles interlock as indicators of another kind of cloud, the techno-cloud. This fake cloud forms another skyscape, one comprised of signals, normally invisible, but pivotal for contemporary interconnectivity, and lightspeed transmission of data, instructions, and communications. A few of the circles disclose lightspeed with the scientific symbol for speed-of-light - c - painted repeatedly around their rims. The white code channels the appearance of fake angels.

By painting words as code - TRUSTED, TRUSTWORTHY, SAFE, AGENTIC, and ETHICAL - they are visualised (revealed) as simply variations of the same thing - code - rearrangements of zeros and ones. As visualised code in a list, the loss of nuance that exists between the meanings and feelings we human beings might attach to each word is clearly lost. While there are multiple forms of code used to configure algorithms, in this painting I am questioning whether human qualities of trust and agency, for example, can be encoded into AI, without them being algorithmic pastiche, merely applications rather than embedded (I won't say embodied, as that is another anthropomorphising word!) 

This comment has stuck with me:

In Passwords (2003), French cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard, 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”. (*) 

In, The Words We Use: Encoded?, my list of painted code visualises the 'reductive yardstick'.

More to say, but I will leave it here for you.

Cheers,

Kathryn

PS. I have many text-based paintings where I paint binary code, as a proxy for a depiction of reality. 

* Jean Baudrillard, Passwords, Trans. Chris Turner (London and NY: Verso, 2003), 76. 

SURRENDERING

(1) Surrendering to False Stars Gouache on paper 76 x 56 cm 2025

I've been thinking about literal and metaphoric surrender for some time. My article (open access), "Surrendering to 'Too Powerful' Technologies: From the F-111 to the MQ-28 Ghost Bat Drone", in Media, War and Conflict journal is an example of some of my thoughts. Here is the article's abstract :

Against a background of contemporary hyperconnected warfare and accelerating advances in drone/robotic systems, this article discusses the airborne drone in relation to concepts of surrender, both historic and contemporary, literal and metaphoric. Drawing upon Paul Virilio’s (2002[1991]) observation that, during the first Gulf War, ‘technologies employed are too powerful’, the author examines how continuing military aspirations for technological speed and lethality represent surrender to the lure of techno-power. Two incidents of human beings surrendering to drones, in Kuwait in 1991 and in Ukraine in 2023, anchor an exploration of literal and metaphoric surrender implications. This discussion is expanded through a military aviation history lens and an art historical perspective. The latter includes close visual and contextual analyses of James Rosenquist’s 1964–1965 painting F-111 and the author’s multi-piece 2022–2023 painting Ghost Bat.

PAINTINGS 

Surrendering to False Stars (fig. 1) hints at a ghost-like figure, arms outstretch to the sky. We can 'see' in our mind's eye (imagination) that the figure's face is upturned, gazing into the expanse of false stars. Are these 'stars' airborne drones, targets, memorials, signs of aesthetic homogenisation as the world is standardised for technological operations conducted at beyond-human speed ...? 

The upwards gaze is a reference to the gaze of soldiers surrendering to airborne drones and the gaze of people enthralled (or not) by sky-based drone light shows. These drone shows are designed for ground-based viewing. If you were above a drone light show, the choreography is not likely to be coherent or understandable. Unlike fireworks, in a drone light show colour and light are pre-scripted for entertainment designed to be viewed from below. Is this kind of entertainment a sign of normalisation processes that indicate our unwitting, coerced, or deliberate 'surrender' to technology? I have painted crosses over the figure's body - a visual suggestion that technology has infiltrated. Do we become our own prisons? Obviously more can be said about Surrendering to False Stars, but I will leave that to you think about.

Surrendering in All Directions (fig. 2) conveys how our use of technology divests us of our data. As we use our devices, and move about the world of hyperconnected systems and devices, our data is transmitted - who knows where... It's a kind of surrender, don't you think?

(2) Surrendering in All Directions Gouache on paper 76 x 56 cm 2025

Cheers, Kathryn

P.S. My last post was about my exhibition DRONE: Ghosts and Shadows, a curated survey show of the last decade of my practice and research. Please check it out. 

DRONE: Ghosts and Shadows

DRONE: Ghosts and Shadows, the curated survey exhibition of the last decade of my creative practice and research is entering its last week. The exhibition is at the University of Southern Queensland Art Gallery, Toowoomba, Australia. The exhibition was curated by the gallery director, Brodie Taylor, JP (Qual), BCRA (hons), FRSA, FSA Scot, MIML, GAICD. The exhibition represents a milestone in my creative and academic journey. 

The show finishes on Friday April 4. Gallery hours Tuesday - Friday 10am - 3pm. 

The exhibition has, according to the Director, attracted hundreds of visitors. I am thrilled! The opening event was also a vibrant occasion, which ended with a panel discussion, 'War in the Age of Hyperconnectivity: What does it look like?'. I was very pleased to discuss military and civilian impacts of signal-enabled hyperconnectivity and the importance of art as a method to examine these impacts, with colleague, Dr. Samid Suliman (Griffith University) and, industry representative, Dave Devine OAM, from Alkath Group-Mellori Solutions.

Here are some photos of the exhibition, opening, and panel discussion. My artist's statement is at the end of the post. And, the exhibition essay 'Against the Sensoration of the World', by Associate Professor Michael Richardson (Uni of New South Wales), is also at the end. 

Beliefs and Battlefields is on the floor. Viewers can walk around the multi-piece painting.

Various parts can be 'read' from different perspectives. 

Left: Ghost Bat, rearrange-able 30 piece painting, 2022-2023.
Right: Ghost Cloud, 2024.

DRONE: Ghosts and Shadows exhibition.

That's me with my exhibition, DRONE: Ghosts and Shadows.

Panel: L - R: Dave Devine OAM, Dr. Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox, Dr. Samid Suliman.

        Panel: L - R: Dave Devine OAM, Dr. Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox, Dr. Samid Suliman.

People at the opening of DRONE: Ghosts and Shadows.
The event had to be postponed to mid-way through the exhibition due to Cyclone Alfred causing havoc and flooding across a vast area of Queensland.  

Thanks must also be given to Brodie Taylor, JP (Qual), BCRA (hons), FRSA, FSA Scot, MIML, GAICD. He is a terrific curator to work with. He had a vision for the show, and it has worked wonderfully.

Artist Statement

DRONE: Ghosts and Shadows

I invite viewers of my paintings to ‘fly’ in their imaginations, above, below, inside, and around the mechanisms of war and spawning new modes of signal-facilitated warfare - information, hybrid, cyber, space, and electromagnetic. If you ‘fly’ beyond orbiting satellites, the earth-to-satellite environment can be cosmically ‘viewed’, as an extension of landscape. It is an invisible hyper-landscape of signals carrying data and instructions, transmitted at beyond-human speed – lightspeed.

Drone: Ghost and Shadows represents a survey of my work created over the last ten years. While the paintings address militarised technology, the militarise-ability of civilian technology, and increasing military interest in the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), each painting has multiple other influences. As a pre-teen I loved biographies of famous scientists - Marconi, Faraday, Curie, Pasteur. I also loved art. During my B.A, while majoring in art history, I undertook a year-long history subject, The History of Science. This subject has profoundly influenced my life’s work, helping to integrate my youthful fascinations, and inspiring me to ‘see’ connections between art, science, culture, technology, society, war, politics, and more. This throng of inspirations has shaped my creative practice, and my interdisciplinary post-graduate studies. 

I grew up on a farm between Dalby and Jimbour, Queensland. As I gazed across the vast landscape of endless skies and flat horizons, I ‘flew’, in imagination, above our farm. I knew what it looked like - buildings, crops, ploughed paddocks, roads - from above.  Childhood imaginational flight is the source of my creative and critical method - ‘imaginational metaveillance.’ I combine it with painting practice to interrogate the visible, and to expose the normally invisible, elements of our hyperconnected world – from civilian and military airborne drones to the lightspeed electromagnetic frequencies our civilian and military technologies rely upon for connectivity and interconnectivity. While imaginational metaveillance and painting are not reliant on digital/cyber devices, or signal connectivity, this does not preclude them as methods to critique these technologies. Rather, they provide a distance from them that affords different perspectives. DRONE: Ghosts and Shadows is your chance to ‘see’ what this distance reveals.

Below is the wonderful exhibition essay by Associate Professor, Michael Richardson (UNSW). 

OTHER NEWS
In other news, I invite you to watch/listen to the first half hour of my presentation 'Painting the Politics of Drones' at the March Visual Politics Research Program seminar, University of Queensland. The second half was Q&A. 

It can also be viewed on YOUTUBE

Cheers,

Kathryn

HOLDING ON OR LETTING GO?

Beliefs and Battlefields Gouache on paper 76 x 56 cm 2024.

NEWS!

New article, Surrendering to 'too powerful' technologies: from the F-111 to the MQ-28 Ghost Bat Drone, published in Media, War, and Conflict journal.

__________________________________________________________________________

HOLDING ON OR LETTING GO?  
Beliefs and Battlefields (above) and An Unfolding Story (below) were inspired by the work of Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia MacDonald, co-authors of a new book The Hand Behind Unmanned: Origins of the US Autonomous Military Arsenal (2024 online, 2025 print). The third painting, Another Unfolding Story (bottom), was inspired by creating the first two paintings. Jacquelyn Schneider is a Hoover Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and is the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative. Julia MacDonald is Director, Research and Engagement Asia New Zealand Foundation, NZ. 

Having previously read some of Jacquelyn Schneider's work, when I read the early edition of this new book's Introduction, I was inspired. From a US perspective, the book examines various issues dealing with human beliefs about the conduct of war, including "technological determinism and military revolutions, force protection and casualty aversion, and service identities"(abstract). 

PAINTINGS

In each painting I have painted outlines of human hands. In Beliefs and Battlefields small squares painted on three of the hands and some of the military devices mimic pixels. These pixels reference digital technology, computer graphics, and aspirational concepts of human-machine teaming. Four shadow-like hands seem to hover in the background, their white forms are ghostly. Perhaps they are reminders of human history and its drive for technological advancement. For example, the Futurists of the early twentieth century embraced the idea of industrial speed - the automobile, the train, and the airplane. Against a backdrop of the First World War and industrial inventions, the Futurists enthusiastically applauded mechanical and industrial speed as a sign of progress. 

In the late twentieth century Paul Virilio observed that during the first Gulf War (1990-1991) the “real environment for all important military action is no longer so much the geographic environment, be it desert or other terrain, but rather the electromagnetic domain” (Virilio, Desert Screen, War at the Speed of Light, 1991, 88). Invisible signals, travelling at lightspeed (or near lightspeed) transmitted images from surveillance drones to remote operators, at the same time images of war were transmitted to television sets around the world. Lightspeed, unlike mechanical speed, operates beyond human perceptions of sight, sound, feeling, and time. Since the first Gulf War the systems and machines of war are increasingly unmanned, remotely operated, autonomous, interconnected, and interoperable. Beliefs and Battlefields depicts how terrain, from earth to orbiting satellites, is enfolded into the invisible "electromagnetic domain". In the painting, unmanned and autonomous robotic systems are connected via painted lines that represent normally invisible signalic connectivity, interconnectivity and interoperability.

 

In Beliefs and Battlefields, the pixel-hands, seem instrumental. The shadow-hands, however, seem to be reaching out, perhaps from the past to the future, which is now. While contemporary war zones remind us that physical battlefields still exist, other kinds of 'battlefields' - cyber, information, political, electromagnetic - generate complexity. The term battlefield is an intriguing one. With my research into increasing military interest in the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) in mind, a quote from United States Department of Defense’s (USDoD) October 2020 Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy raises concerns. The document describes the EMS operational (EMSO) environment - Virilio's "electromagnetic domain" - as a "battlespace, a place where competition and warfare, as well as commerce and other nonmilitary activities, are conducted". (USDoD, 3) The earth-to-orbiting satellite environment, therefore, is a largely invisible battlespace/field that embroils both civilian and military technologies. This sense of an encompassing volumetric battlespace, from Earth to satellites, is evident in both Beliefs and Battlefields and An Unfolding Story. 

In An Unfolding Story, I have painted interconnecting circles, rather than lines, to indicate interconnectivity. These circles form a cloud-like mesh - the 'cloud'. Like the shadow-hands in Beliefs and Battlefields, the hands in this painting seem to hover between being there and not. Are they holding on or letting go? What are they holding onto or letting go of? Could it be beliefs?

An Unfolding Story, Gouache on paper 76 x 56 cm 2024.

Another Unfolding Story (below), painted some months after Beliefs and Battlefields and An Unfolding Story, is a departure from the other two paintings. However, I probably would not have painted it without the experience of thinking through and creating the other two paintings. I think there might be more to come too! Thank you Jacquelyn and Julia!

Again, hands feature, but I will let you ponder alone.
(the binary code 'instructs' repeated questions marks ?????

The painting echoes previous work On the Edge of Being and Where's The Beating Heart?. Both paintings channel the aesthetics of Douglas Hofstadter's invention, the ambigram. Check out the linked titles for more details. 

Cheers, Kathryn.

Another Unfolding Story, Gouache on paper 76 x 56 cm 2025.