All We'd Ever Need Is One Another
Mixed media installation. 2018.
Variable dimensions. 2 flat bed scanners, 3 networked PC computers, large format printer, office supplies, photo light, 12 inkjet prints on canvas, website, twitter account, instagram account.
All We'd Ever Need Is One Another is a mixed-media installation which creates images autonomously through self-generating techniques: a continuously running "art-factory" operating independently of human input.
The installation self-generates images using two flatbed scanners laying on their side, with scanning surfaces pointing at one another. A computer script creates automatic mouse movements, randomizing the settings of the proprietary scanning software interface, and beginning a scanning process.
Each newly created image is then analyzed by a series of deep-learning algorithms trained on a database of contemporary artworks in economic and institutional circulation. When an image matches an existing artwork beyond an 83% match, it is "validated as art" and uploaded to a dedicated website, twitter, and instagram account. Occasionally, high ranking matches are printed live at the gallery using a large format printer.
Playing on notions of technological automatization, the agency of objects, cultural consumption, and the economics of artistic production, the installation acts as a golem-like assemblage, continuously and mindlessly self-producing without regard for human spectators.
"These images I describe are created by two desktop scanners directed at each other, reading the way light hits the glass on their counterpart, the way light emanates from one to the other. The two scanners are fixed one in front of the other, but movement is built into them and reflected on them. They mirror the light conditions in the room where they are set: when you see an abstract pictogram, you could be looking at the moon. Or at the strip of light in one of the scanners. They make landscapes that meld the site and the tool." - Orit Gat, excerpt from exhibition essay. The full essay is available here.
allwedeverneed.com
Production Credits:
Concept, design, R&D: Adam Basanta
Computer Vision & Machine Learning Development: Greg Sadetsky
GUI Programming:
Nicholas Estherer
Photos by Simon Belleau (1-3, 5) and Guy L'Heureaux (4, 6).