The first two series of works in our gallery tour on Thursday the 18th of April were directly concerned with, and addressed, locality. Specifically the area around Whitechapel, London. Janet Cardiff’s ‘The Missing Voice (Case Study B)’ was illuminating in the way it exploited the headphone paradigm, placing the listener in the real world on a sound walk. Beginning at the Whitechapel Gallery, we were directed through the streets and alleys by Cardiff’s voice, relaying an abstracted noir narrative about a murdered woman, the narrator. Tracing her movements, asides and observations from subjective historical perspectives. It felt like embarking on an adventure, or entering a video game, it was a truly exciting experience, one that demonstrated the great potential of sound art in a way that I had not encountered before. Its tangible connection to a real, ever-moving environment, drawing connections through time, created an eerie documentation of the universality of human moments, contrasted by change.
Andrew Pierre Hart’s exhibition within the Whitechapel Gallery itself, ‘Bio-Data Flows and Other Rhythms – A Local Story’, was concerned with the diaspora living within, and migration to, the Whitechapel area. Primarily exhibiting paintings, the sole noteworthy piece that incorporated a sonic element was ‘Free Writers’; an abstract film comprised of shots of the local area interspersed with freely improvised dance routines. To view the film, the audience sits on a plywood box which had subwoofers built in. In conjunction with the imagery, such as a passing underground train, the vibration through the seat was designed to situate you within Whitechapel’s ‘vibrant rumble and dissonant past’. The composition and execution of the film left me with the sense of it being made hastily; much of the footage was of poor quality and seemingly furtively collected in dark streets and train platforms, from a smartphone. While this could suggest a quotidian reflection of diasporic life in Whitechapel, as an art piece it felt like a pedestrian afterthought. Also, as a carpenter by trade, I was quick to notice the underwhelming filling and sanding on the screw-holes in the plywood seat. Perhaps irrelevant, yet that may have lent in some small part to my personal disengagement I felt, and the sense of a lack of thought being put into the construction and creation of individual elements in the exhibition.
The final exhibition we visited Maria Than’s exhibition at the arebyte Gallery, ‘Homage to Quan Âm’, was a thematically rich, lively and cohesive experience.
Detailing the ideological strains and subsequent resolution of the artist’s Buddhist childhood clashes with the humour and excesses of pop culture, Than tells a thematic narrative of coming to terms with, and embracing, Buddhism and the teachings she received in her youth. I appreciated most the variety of disciplines on display, from video art to animation, 3D renders, virtual reality installations, to physical sculptures, the diversity of material presented was impressive for what was a fairly small space. The most interested of all was a low disk of fine sand, that imagery was projected onto from above. When the sand was manipulated, the program presumably knew the height of the sand, and you were able to move the image in physical space through the sand as an interactive medium. It was a soothing, sensorial centrepiece in a very digital-forward exhibition that felt very considered. I have never seen a piece of art do quite what this piece was able to.
The application of AI and technology as a symbiotic force for social good is a central concern for Than and her work, and I do not want to say I was disappointed with the broad usage of AI throughout the exhibition, but I did see very immediately recognisable image and video processing techniques that are to be found everywhere. Distorted episodes of The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle were enabled by AI effects that are commonplace in the digital realm, and an unavoidable dichotomy exists in the current cultural dialogues surrounding the usage of artificial intelligence. I believe that whatever constitutes the ‘art world’ is more readily accepting of the usage of AI, than many commercial or industrial perspectives. I wonder why? Perhaps artistic application preludes an interrogation of the meaning of agency in creation, where industrial applications feel more intended to deceive. I am still very mixed on AI as a tool for creation, generally falling on the side of disapproval, especially if the resulting processes seem so familiar and accessible, almost desperate for more radical, deep exploitation and exploration, rather than as a creative shortcut.