Convolutions

The three digital commissions that launch TFAM Net. Open explore increasingly blurry boundaries between real and virtual life, fact and fiction today.

Contemporary life is undergoing a period of convolution. To call something ‘convoluted’ commonly indicates that it is overly complicated or confused. However, in the field of AI, convolution refers to a key technical feature of neural networks involved in image recognition, visual and text generation. As concerns mount regarding the social effects of machine-generated misinformation, and spam (produced by convolutional models), this suite of artworks highlights the topic of ambivalent signals of all kinds, and their productive power. A cascade of sense, nonsense, possibilities, and ‘latent’ realities are the order of the day. For the featured artists, heightened technological powers breed excitement, noise, plans, and confusion in equal measure. As their works appear to suggest, it can be difficult to discern if we inhabit the real world or a hallucination; whether we are living through a technological enlightenment, or a new dark age—full of myths and speculation. Is this a utopia, a dystopia, or everything all at once?