Straight through the Wall

STTW 2031
Outdoor Screening Dates:

PART 1 - EAST VILLAGE
Friday, June 4th, 8:30PM
118 1st Ave, New York, NY 10009

PART 2 - BUSHWICK
Friday, June 11th, 8:30PM
14 Thames St, Brooklyn, NY 11206

ARTISTS

TRACY ABBOTT SZATAN, ASHLEIGH ALEXANDRIA, DAVID ANDERSSON, SUE BEYER, SARAH BORRUSO, CONOR DALY, LEE GREENE, HYEMI KIM, IANTHE JACKSON, RAJI JAGADEESAN, CHRISTOPHER KACZMAREK, JOHN KNECHT, KAREL VAN LAERE, RYAN ANDREW LEE, JACLYN MCKAY, ROBIN MÖDDER, JENN RUFF, REBECCA SHAPASS, SILKBLADE, KATE STONE, ONDINE VIÑAO


Thinking of questioning and embodying the possibilities of the future in my own work, I have been investigating the ideas behind collective practices that includes non-human/machine collaborators and de-authored experiences that are generated through algorithms or artificial intelligence. For Collaboration I created a new work based upon these themes by building a custom algorithm to remix a collection of visual possibilities for the future.


Content was collected through algorithm-based searches of archives and contemporary content utilizing key words such as “future, utopia, dystopia, robot, artificial intelligence, future technology, and future society” to create a bank of sample videos. I then built a custom program that utilized multiple nested and randomized functions to remix the video bank in a way that removed human choice from the actual generation. In this way, I as the artist will became a collaborator with the machine. I provided the content and the container, but the machine made the decisions and produce the final work.


As we move towards a world that is using machine learning and nascent artificial intelligence to analyze and, in many ways, guide most aspects of our lives, new forms of heterogenous collaborative teams that include human intelligent machine agents will become not just possible, but inevitable. The conscious participation of the arts in the conversation about, and development and implementation of, these new collaborative possibilities is important. The arts serve in many ways, one of which is through the synthesis of possibilities and the envisioning potential futures. In this experimental film I look to represent the future not just through content, but through the direct practice.