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ISSUE 65 — AUTUMN 2024

Notwithstanding its significance, data presents a great deal of uncertainty. From a material standpoint, it is both real and invisible; it is something that, in the process of being understood, both shapes and renders the world. Some see it as the pinnacle of human intellect, while others regard it as nothing more than an exploitative and monitoring system. In 2013, well before AI took the artworld by storm, New York Times political commentator David Brooks coined the term ‘dataism’. In his article ‘The Philosophy of Data”, Brooks posited that in an ever more intricate world, the utilisation of data could mitigate cognitive biases and shed light on latent behavioural patterns. More recently, according to scientist Albert-László Barabási, “Dataism is an artistic practice that acknowledges how data has become humanity’s principal means of understanding nature, characterising social processes, developing new technologies, and, increasingly, probing what makes us human. This approach to art making is fuelled by the conviction that art cannot escape, ignore, or bypass data if it wishes to remain relevant to the post-visual processes that shape our society”. Meanwhile, artists across the globe are joining forces to block AI appropriation of their work and to reframe the current configurations of copyright laws that fail to truly protect intellectual property. Most notably, AI might usher in a new, self-substantive, machine-produced order of unempathetic rendering, capable of displacing the importance of the creative process that lies at the core of art practices.
 

Antennae’s ‘Dataism’ focuses on the impact AI and other forms of data analysis and rendering are having on art making, curatorial practices, and writings that center on ecocritical themes. Which applications, modalities, engagements, and manifestations can be seen as productive? How can data analysis manifest what might otherwise remain idle? How can it expand our thinking remits and ability to connect? How can it instil empathy or promote alienation? With thanks and gratitude to all contributors and to Antennae’s Academic Board.

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Dr. Giovanni Aloi
Editor in Chief

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in this issue

Craig Ames
Verónica Perales Blanco
Laura Cinti
Ursula Damm 
Driessens & Verstappen
Clayton Ferreira
Verena Friedrich

ChatGPT
GC Heemsker
Mark Horvath 
Chris Hunter
Younghui Kim
Adam Lovasz
Bernice Nauta

Joel Ong
Khristina Ots
Verónica Perales
Špela Petrič 
Britt Ransom
Stephanie Rothenberg 
Ken Rinaldo

David Stout
Splaces.Studio
Suzanne Thorpe
Melanie Wilmink
Yvonne Volkart
Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko
Sookyun Yang

The critique of datafication as a governance fantasy

 

text: Mark Horvath and Adam Lovasz

Social systems are too complex and indeterministic for any quantifiable social “laws” to even exist. Neoliberal governance in practice seems to have forgotten the initial skepticism of neoliberal theorists regarding quantification. Supposed scientific objectivity subordinates phenomena to an all- encompassing quantification.

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The expedition: A fictional narrative inspired
by real events


text and images: Clayton Ferreira

The Expedition comprises 22
AI-generated images retelling
a German scientific expedition from the early 20th century in Santa Maria, Brazil. AI techniques were used to create characters, dinosaurs, landscapes, and maps, resulting in detailed and vivid imagery.

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Amplifying nature as AI model

 

text and images: Ken Rinaldo

 

The evolution of artificial intelligence is explored through a comparison of: Autopoiesis (2000) and Opera for Dying Insects (2020). These artworks examine AI’s abilities to amplify subtle natural processes, while provoking reflection on the environmental implications of the technology.

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Nature-driven technologies in art

 

text: Khristina Ots images: Splaces.Studio

 

This essay illustrates Splaces.Studio’s projects as a testament to integrating AI and scientific principles into art, creating immersive experiences resonating with individuals and the natural world.

On the hunt for the missing female

text: Laura Cinti

The solitary male specimen discovered in South Africa’s Ngoye Forest highlights an ecological
crisis, as E. woodii requires a female counterpart for sexual reproduction. Our project, AI in the Sky, integrates multiple technologies and methods to locate a potential female E. woodii.

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Suspended

 

text and images: Britt Ransom

Suspended by Britt Ransom is
an installation exploring what is speculated to be the oldest live
oak tree in New Orleans, Louisiana. Located in City Park, the McDonogh Oak’s branches are propped up by a series of telephone poles and it sits on top of an ever-shifting landscape embedded with a complex history.

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Rendering a plant protagonist

This text explores the making
of The Plantriarchy, a film where
an “invasive” plant species is the lead character. The film delves
into Critical Plant Studies ideas, challenging traditional views
of plants and highlighting their sentience and intelligence. It aims to create an artistic impression, respecting plants’ intrinsic worth and exploring their communication and movement.

 

text and images: Bernice Nauta and GC Heemskerk

 

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Awkward intimacies

 

text and images: Špela Petrič and Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko

A dialogue between Petrič’s artistic research into relations of automation in horticulture and Wołodźko’s philosophy of contamination as a framework for encountering industrial greenhouses. Positing the greenhouse as a test-bed for future automation-centered ecosystems, they identify the necessity to address the complex relationships emerging within agro-industrial spaces.

Synthotypes of British and Foreign Ferns

 

text and images: Craig Ames

 

As a survey of algorithmic subject classification and the aesthetics of generative AI, Synthotypes of British and Foreign Ferns is a collection of post-photographic, synthesised specimens, fabricated with commercially available AI imaging algorithms. Seeded in latent space, the ‘synthotypes’ are part of an algorithmic depiction of the botanical specimens that originally featured in Anna Atkins’ pioneering work.

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Listening with oysters, sensing data

 

text and images: Stephanie Rothenberg & Suzanne Thorpe

As our ocean’s vital ecosystem becomes more vulnerable to the demands of capitalism, how can we determine safe harbors? Can we expand our sense-making to guide us to a politics of mutual environmental tending?

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Time of the Flies

The installations transform sound
patterns of fly songs into digital abstractions, thus enabling a mode of interspecies communication. To collect the data for the observa- tion and play with the flies, the artist works with a scientist and
a musician but also breeds the insects in her kitchen.

 

text and images: Ursula Damm and Yvonne Volkart

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AI meets ALP

 

text: Verónica Perales Blanco images: Verónica Perales

 

This essay discusses the practice of hypermedia artist Verónica Perales, which employs an AI text transcriber applied to voiceovers from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Can AI transcribe connotative language? Can AI learn and grasp formulas that do not respond to computational logic?

ERBSENZÄHLER Quality Sorter V2

 

text and images: Verena Friedrich

 

The long-term project Erbsenzähler
(lit.: pea counter) explores the increasing quantification of life. It comprises a series of industrial- style machines in which large quantities of pea seeds are analysed, classified, and sorted according to different parameters.

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Pareidolia

 

text and images: Driessens & Verstappen

In the artwork Pareidolia, offers insight into the morphology of sand grains and the inconceivable number of their unique variants. In addition, the work comments on the extreme implementation of an anthropocentric worldview, whereby everything revolves around us.

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Seeding synthetic nature

This roundtable builds on a series of workshops called Artifacts of
the Invisible City: Open Datasets
as Creative Material
, which linked Canadian and Korean participants. Here, the same participants interrogate how data is leveraged as a material in physical and digital worlds, as well as how generative AI output reveals the limitations and logic of both humans and machines.

 

​in conversation: Melanie Wilmink, Younghui Kim, Joel Ong and Sookyun Yang

 

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AWE/struck: the impact of a sky-high death toll

 

text: Chris Hunter

Chicago's beguiling skyline is a fatal seduction for the legions
of migratory birds who are killed when they collide with its glass monoliths. Awe/struck proposes a ‘public hearing’ that captures the invisible death toll of birdstrikes as a way to confront the literal impact of our built environment.

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Tidal arrays

 

text and images: David Stout

Tidal Arrays is a post-photographic series utilizing generative AI to meld simulated elements including, lens- based photo-real imagery, hand- drawn and painted gestures to create a bio-mimetic assemblage.

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"Today, one of the greatest roles in anthropogenic practices is assigned to technology. Therefore, in order to reframe knowledge production, we not only need to rethink the role of scientific knowledge but also find a way to change the current technological framework based on the ideas of exploitation?"

Khristina Ots p 52

"The challenge lies in moving beyond a human-centric perspective that prioritizes technological solutions without acknowledging their wider implications."

​​​​

Laura Cinti p 75

"The question then becomes whether creativity and artistic value are solely tied to human consciousness or whether the mere production of an evocative, engaging, or meaningful piece of work can be considered art, regardless of the 'creator'."​​

ChatGPT p 12

"At the same time in which we celebrate the profundity that is our planetary birthright, we also need to look into the dark mirror."​​

 

David Stout p 214

p 16
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