A sentence caught my eye:
the implication of making art for machine viewers. Huh. Strange concept.
I'm not the type of person to say hi and thank you to ChatGPT, and yet the idea of art creation for machines moved me. Machines exist for one purpose only, to be used. Why couldn't they, just once, take a break, sit back and enjoy some art? That thought made me feel oddly melancholic, as if I was experiencing a strange empathy for a "helpless" object. Absurd.
I humoured the thought for a while. What would art by machines for machines even be? In my head popped the uncanny image of a fridge, beaming and overheated, bowing to an audience of cheering kitchen appliances after an hour-long performance on thermal consistency. A ridiculous little fantasy, yet it nudged me toward a stranger question.
Would machine art follow an art history anything like our own?
Excerpt from The Misunderstanding of the Implications of Making Art for Machine Viewers.
Part of the online exhibition Ghost in the Loop.
Ghost in the Loop is an interactive online exhibition that consists of six experimental artworks that explore how artificial intelligence and computational systems are transforming the ways images and cultural content are produced, circulated and experienced.
“It positions today’s AI as a haunting: a space where histories, images, design, mythologies and errors are all disguised within computation. Through exploring each of these works, we begin to question the effects that the visual worlds that are rendered by machines have on our own.” [ https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/ghost-loop ]
Featuring works by Célune Acheampong, Linden Derichs, Mariana Marangoni, Martyna Marciniak, Shaheer Tarar and myself.
Commissioned and produced as part of Inverted Worlds Lab by The Photographers’ Gallery in cooperation with Goethe-Institut London. Selected through an open call by Maitreyi Maheshwari, Sam Mercer and Mario Schruff. The interactive website was designed by Sam Mercer and various agents.
Visit the online exhibition here → GHOST IN THE LOOP[ https://unthinking.photography/projects/ghost-in-the-loop/ ]
A big thank you to the curators, my fellow artists, the institutions, and everyone who helped make this exhibition happen!