Technologies of lived abstraction: future present
2018
Durational performance, 3 hours
Durational performance, 3 hours
Using machine learning as its foundation, the work addresses questions of how the algorithmic and the notion of a quantified self are creating "soft architectures" impacting the construction of movement: in both an interior and social way. The performers (the quantified subjects of the work) are wearing biosensors that read the data produced through their movements (muscle tension, orientation, speed, etc.). Their data is translated in realtime by neural network algorithms, producing a constantly moving and mutating light sculpture projection. It is the visualised form of their data, an abstracted “data self”, acting as another body in the space. It moves and dances with its human subject, and the performer responds to the unpredictably abstract outputs produced by the predictive algorithms. Both human and machine are engaged in a complex and constantly evolving positive feedback loop.
Over the course of the 3-hour performance, the performers engage in various choreographic scores that produce new readings of and transition between states of solipsism, narcissism, competition, mania, eroticism and collectivity. The performance unravels from its seemingly slick futuristic entry point, referencing that this illusion of the dystopic future is actually more present than we realise. The algorithm predicting what it thinks the subject will need (desire) in the future based upon its present data analysis, and bringing those future potentials into the present. The durational aspect of the work answering to the ubiquitousness of artificially intelligent machines confronting and redistributing what is the human, where the human must then navigate these abstract power relations. The performers as the quantified subjects of the work confront this radical intimacy with the algorithm, each other and the audience.
Credits:
Performed by Marlen Pflueger, Phoenix Tanner, Monica Tolia & Moses Ward
Sound composition by James Philip Brown (with contributions from Peder Mannerfelt)
Programming by Terry Clark
Exhibitions/events:
- 12-17 July 2018 in Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art Degree Show at Goldsmiths University of London
- (Upcoming in 2019) 'Anamorphic Waves' at Ugly Duck (London)
Review in Elephant Magazine (24.07.2018):
https://elephant.art/eight-artists-to-watch-ma-and-mfa-shows-2018/
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Documentation photography: Sam Schmitt
*Project generously supported by Goldsmiths, Department of Computing
*Project generously supported by Goldsmiths, Department of Computing