Data Streams. Art, algorithms and artificial intelligence
Curated by Chris Clarke and Anaïs Nony
3 December 2021 – 13 March 2022
The Glucksman Gallery
Data Streams
An exhibition of work by Irish and international artists that looks at how artists are engaging with the increasing advancement of data collection and digital surveillance, and how these technologies are silently transforming our surroundings.
- Artists presented: Malia Bruker, Ed Fornieles, Benjamin Gaulon, Esther Hovers, Kennedy Browne, Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Yuri Pattison, Suzanne Treister, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Addie Wagenknecht
VIR/L
Malia Bruker’s VIR/L portrays the artist Lena NW, a self-described feminist-nihilist who challenges notions of sexuality and morality in her work. Combining traditional documentary and virtual surrealism, and incorporating memes and viral videos, the film provocatively explores the ways in which the internet can shape and subvert established notions of identity.
Post-Surveillance Art
Suzanne Treister’s Post-Surveillance Art digital prints comment on the pervasive and deeply entrenched use of data collection technologies in contemporary society. They describe a world where we are constantly uploading our lives – in complicity with government and corporate data collection – sharing everything, as algorithms flow through our bodies and our devices up to satellites in outer space and back again, collecting data to be used wherever, whenever and by whoever.
Associations
Ed Fornieles’ Associations series links together images based on formal and conceptual associations. Using various internet search tools, he relates his process to ‘the zone’ or ‘flow state’ – a mental state connected both to the creative act as well as compulsive behaviour – which many social media companies aim to provoke in the user as a form of captivating their attention and making them pliable to suggestion and direction.
False Positives
Esther Hovers’ False Positives looks at intelligent surveillance systems. These images capture cameras which detect deviant behaviour within public space, focusing on ‘anomalies’ in body- language and movement that could indicate criminal intent. In The Right to be Forgotten, Hovers reproduces and incrementally alters a Google-found portrait of the first man to successfully claim his ‘right to be forgotten’ in the European Court of Justice.
Real World Harm
Kennedy Browne present a series of works from their Real World Harm project, a response to unfolding neoliberal systems of labour, technology and politics. Their sound installation consists of interviews with former content moderators at social network corporations, with these low- wage and often multilingual contract employees describing their traumatic experiences on the front lines of the internet. Their work also includes an extracted image from a 360-degree video on Oculus, a virtual reality platform, capturing the Irish Data Commissioners office, and a display of retrieved data collected from the Austrian activist Max Schrems.
Transformation Scenario
In Clemens von Wedemeyer’s film Transformation Scenario, the impact of emulated group behaviour in society – and the menacing power of the multitude – are explored through virtual simulations of crowd scenes. His collage-like juxtaposition of real-life protest footage and algorithmic sequences reveal the ways in which mass movements are choreographed – and countered by security forces
I Was Her And She Was Me And Those We Might Become
Kitso Lynn Lelliot presents a multi-screen installation that evokes the migration and movement of the post-colonial body. Drawing on the idea of ‘Sankofa’ (a Ghanaian Adinkra concept loosely meaning one has to look back from where they came to see where they are going) through the implementation of the tools and resources of the internet age, Lelliot extracts online imagery and symbols, mythologies and narratives, to create a fully immersive environment.
Corrupt.video
Benjamin Gaulon’s installation uses a wireless video receiver to transmit the movements of gallery visitors. These devices, which are popular consumer products, can be used for wireless surveillance cameras, but have also been used by parents to monitor their children. In his screen-based work Corrupt.video, multiple users have contributed by uploading footage, which has been ‘glitched’ by customised software.
Outsourced Views Visual Economies
Yuri Pattison's practice centres around networked communication and the internet as a physical place. Pattison contacted low-paid workers plying their services on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform, a “micro-work” marketplace for tasks renumerated with minimal pay. The video Outsourced Views, Visual Economies compiles smartphone video snippets and photos taken by hired workers of the view from their windows (nearest their work place) after the artist posted a website listing for the task.
“I will not download things that get me in trouble”
Addie Wagenknecht’s mural painting of handwritten text. The defiant phrase “I will not download things that get me in trouble” is repeated across the gallery walls, gradually and subtly changing in the process, before succumbing to a complete surrender: “I will download things.”