Artists react. It’s what they’ve always done. In our modern world, there is a tension between technology and humanity, and between technology and nature. Emerson Contemporary’s “Echoes of the Heart” exhibit demonstrates how artists respond to this tension.
Running from July 29 through Oct. 4, the exhibit utilizes new media art—a genre that uses digital technology as the material—as an approach to the relationship between technology and humanity and nature.
New media art as a medium has had difficulties in New England, which Emerson Contemporary’s Distinguished Curator-in-Residence Leonie Bradbury surmises is because of the lack of equipment and expertise.
“On some level it’s logistics, because in order to showcase this type of work you need technology, projectors, and people who are able to work with this media,” said Bradbury. Emerson does specialize in media art, as such, it has staff to assist these artists, helping them realize their visions.
The curators put out a public call for work in the spring, which received 84 submissions. Six projects were then selected out of these works: Iwalani Kaluhiokalani’s “The Radiance Chasers,” Clint Baclawski’s “Mojave,” Justin Levesque’s “Geographical Problems: Blue is a Warning,” Erik DeLuca’s “White Spaces Radio,” Karlie Zhao’s “Thread in the Air,” and VHF Studio’s “Narcissus Looks Back and They Love You.”
The projects were selected for their “experimentation” and “pushing the boundaries of what media art could be,” said Bradbury.
In selecting these pieces, the curators not only needed to account for how the gallery space is utilized, but also how these projects speak to each other.
“I really feel like there’s a lot of cohesion between these groups of projects,” said Bradbury. “I think all the projects have some kind of tension within their work between a traditional mode of image making and something that’s very new and digital.”
Baclawski, for example, used advertising scrolls as a frame for his images, which are digitized traditional film, creating this unique sculptural installation.
“It’s very experiential with movement and sound,” said Bradbury. “It’s definitely not just a photograph, but something beyond the image.”
The effect is uncanny—advertising turned inside out, showing nature and destroying it all over again—replicating the aftermath of a wildfire. The wires that surround the piece give tincture to the technological unconscious we all contend with.
Other projects utilize AI technology. In “The Radiance Chasers,” Kaluhiokalani fed her paintings through AI to create moving images that can be seen at the doorway of the exhibition.
Levesque did something similar with his project, using generative adversarial networks.
“It’s a kind of computer system that I trained to make new images by studying lots of other examples of images,” Levesque wrote in an email. “You can think of it like two players in a game; the generator tries to create images that look convincing, the discriminator judges those images against the real examples and says if they look real or not.”
“It’s like the machine is dreaming about ice, creating its own visions based on what it studied,” he said. “Asking, what happens when natural forms are filtered through a digital process that reshapes and reimagines them?”
“As a curator, thinker, and professor, I’m really interested in the intersection between art, society, and technology, and what happens when artists experiment or create work using technologies that are designed for something else like corporate or commercial purposes but they’re using it for aesthetic or artistic purposes,” said Bradbury. “It’s a different way of using the technology that is really valuable; we can learn a lot from how artists view the world and the way they engage with modern technology. I don’t really have anything against AI, I think it’s interesting to see how artists use it in their practices.”
However, she acknowledged that these technologies can cause harm.
“Some artists are having their work used without permission to feed into AI programs and it uses their authorship without consent. But, as long [as] the artist is the agent, I think it’s alright,” said Bradbury.
In our rapidly changing times, it is exciting to see how artists adapt to new technologies and develop new mediums to communicate relevant ideas. This exhibition is a glimpse into the future, with all its perils and possibilities.
As part of the public programming, the gallery will be holding artist talks for “Echoes of the Heart” on Oct. 7 for Justin Levesque and VHF Studios, Oct. 21 for Clint Baclawski and Iwalani Kaluhiokalani, and Nov. 4 for Erik DeLuca and Karlie Zhao. All will be held at the Media Art Gallery from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
