Concurrent exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery by two young American artists tackle the advent of artificial intelligence head on. Deeply ingrained in the virtual and the digital, Sondra Perry and Ian Cheng (on view through May 20 and May 28 respectively) explore issues ranging from identity and power structures to the history of human consciousness and our capacity to adapt to change through technological modes of story telling.Best known for his “Emissaries” trilogy, 2015-17, Cheng creates densely populated artificial reality worlds where each episode is a computer-generated simulation in which the action unfolds in open-ended narratives in real time. Presented in full at the Serpentine, it’s shown along side a new artwork, “BOB (Bag of Beliefs),” 2018, that turns the gallery space into something akin to an animal sanctuary for new forms of 21st century life, but where the roles of spectator and the object for public consumption have been reversed. These sentient, AI beings evolve in real time feeding off their interaction with gallery visitors.Cheng’s work is characterized by complexlogic systems that underpin individual characters in his constructed virtual environments, as well as models of artificial intelligence. Drawing on his study ofcognitive science and his work with George Lucas’ special effects company, Industrial Light and Magic, Cheng’s live simulations — and our experience of them as viewers — avoid closure through an infinite cycle of activity, growth, decay, war, peace that continue to evolve and be played out even when no one is watching. He is like a scientist who programs his charges with behavioral drives, then sets them free, letting “nature” and causality do their thing. If “Emissaries” and Cheng’s wider practice is about a certain giving up of a singular, authorial control to chance, Sondra Perry uses digital tools and material — blue screen technology, 3D avatars and found footage from the Internet — to create works that, if not directly reclaiming control, address the ways in which black subjects are imagined, represented and systemically oppressed by digital technologies across contemporary media.“Graft and Ash for a Three-Monitor Workstation,” 2016, is a digital video installation narrated by Perry’s own avatar. Her face, presented close up, has been rendered using the artist’s features with a relaxing yet monotone, artificial voice that we instinctively attribute to an AI entity. “Ocean Chill out Music for Relaxation/ Meditation/ Wellness/ Yoga” plays in thebackground. So far, so neutral. But then the voice in tones that “[she] could not replicate her fatness in the software that was used to make us,” and it becomes clear that even in this digitally rendered world “non-standard” bodies and voices are policed and must subscribe to a norm enforced by the dominant culture.In a parallel piece, “Wet and Wavy Looks — Typhoon coming on,” 2016, JMW Turner’s famous 1840 painting “The Slave Ship” has been digitally manipulated to replicate ripples of skin, reclaiming black history from a forgetful past.Well versed in contemporary myth making, Perry and Cheng show that AI — or rather its simulation and the technologies that power it — is neither neutral, objective, nor devoid of ingrained bias.— This article appears in the March 2018 edition of Modern Painters
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