Week 25: Final Project Post

 This week was my final week properly working on my project before submission deadlines and finalizing other parts of this/other projects takes over. Within this week I wanted to culminate everything I have learned in this journey so far into a single piece of work. 

To achieve this I wanted to, once again, shift the focal point back to the neutral position of the process. It is important to me as an artist and as a collaborator to fully document the work that goes in and how it is split between myself and the machine. To showcase to the viewer how this relationship works, its symbiosis and its other intricacies. I came to this conclusion via feedback received through the Kunstmatrix exhibition, as some people were intrigued, or even confused, about how my work came to exist.

With that in mind I created a short, stop-motion video that features a distinctly human drawing being created, smudges, fingerprints, and all, that is ultimately completely warped to an unrecognisable glitch-scape by the machine. I wanted it to be clear there was no ill-intent from the machine and that this process was completely collaborative. The video can be viewed below:

I see this kind of video as a small beginning to a whole new era of this project, although it is coming to a technical end with the finishing point of the academic year approaching, I plan on continuing this intriguing collaboration until the question can be answered: can the machine be creative? Honestly, this question may never be answered due to the infinite amount of intricacies regarding the definition of the creative, reproducibility, coding limitations and technological advancements. This ongoing line of questioning has, and will continue to, only keep me more engaged with the process as a whole.

While I would like to imagine this video in an exhibition setting, as a large scale projection or installation, I feel I don't have the time nor the resources to do so right now. I don't feel like this piece should be exhibited at all. To me it is introspective and experimental, I have learned a lot through making it and have been given countless ideas regarding exhibition limitations through my previous research, but I am happy for this piece to remain a small glimpse into what may be one day.