Speculations on the Cloud

Digital collage and digital drawing, sublimation print on black-out fabric, aluminium frames, cables (optional), 2017

What does a low-fi collaboration between a human and a so-called AI look like? How can collaborations between human and non-human digital artists bring us closer to a new visual language for understanding the impacts of digitalisation? Speculations on the Cloud encompasses a series of digital prints on black-out fabric derived from an iterative, collaborative process between the artist and a neural network and an installative version of the work, which expands the work into three-dimensional space through the sculptural use of cables.

Digital drawings, found images, and digital collages are fed into a neural network (Deep Dream), which is programmed to develop the image inputs along a set of parameters. The results of this process are then further manipulated and digitally edited and incorporated into a digital collage. Through numerous iterations and cycles between drawing, editing, and the neural network's contributions a complexly layered composition evolves that represents, in a sense, a sort of low-fi digital collaboration between the artist and the AI.

Speculations on the Cloud, with an aesthetic that walks the line between attraction and the uncanny valley, refers also to the politics of the Graphic User Interface (GUI) and the iconography of the digital.