Description
As digital technology rapidly evolves, innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) become increasingly accessible to the general public. As a result, it is no surprise that contemporary artists have begun incorporating these technologies into their creative processes, radically expanding beyond the already established mediums of the arts. Originally commissioned for Ether’s Bloom, an artistic programme focused on exploring AI through the arts, Mixed Signals (2023) is an artist’s book by kennedy+swan that merges the conventional codex of the book with growing technologies, by incorporating interactive AR elements into its medium. Primarily characterised by their self-referentiality, artists’ books often turn the material itself into the subject matter of the work (Drucker 2004, 161). Accordingly, the simultaneously tactile and digital materiality of Mixed Signals is one of its central themes, along with commentary on the meaning of AI and other forms of non-human intelligence. Additionally, artists’ books as a genre are often associated with politically motivated and revolutionary activity (Burkhart 2007, 25; Drucker 2004, 2), due to the book format facilitating their distribution and allowing these works to reach a wider audience (White 2012, 46–47). Consequently, the artist’s book could easily transform into a vehicle for the contamination between activistic theory and artistic practice, as I argue is the case with Mixed Signals. The work’s narrative imagines a near future in which AI and nature become entrenched, invoking themes of environmentalism and dystopia as a result of humanity’s desire to decode the natural world through technology. This thematic reflection, I argue, is expressed through the conflicting materiality of Mixed Signals, consisting of a series of nature-themed watercolours that transform into interactive AR artworks through a smartphone app. These complex augmented artworks, I further suggest, not only act as an expansion of the book’s narrative, but also act as a means to relate to the themes of converging technology, nature, and humanity’s role in maintaining the natural world. By conducting a qualitative analysis of selected pages within this artist’s book, I examine the function of Mixed Signals as an artwork that uses the book format in conjunction with AR to “explore the possibilities and limits of technological responses to environmental crisis” (Page 2021, 88), thus challenging the concept of an anthropocentric society.| Period | 26 Oct 2024 |
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| Event title | X Iberian Meeting of Aesthetics: from aisthesis to poiesis & vice versa |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Funchal, PortugalShow on map |