You’ve described Paul′ as a “synthetic self-portrait.” What have you learned about yourself (or about the limits of selfhood) through building a version of you that isn’t you?
That I know less about my own work than I realize. Even more perplexing is this: what I believe authentically expresses genuine aspects of me and my work may in fact be nothing other than the story of my compliance with the external demands I have lived under. Making work. Doing exhibitions. Doing events like AIR. Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called the part of us that only complies with external demands the “False Self.” So the part of me that I thought mattered most in saving was in truth the “compliant” or false part of me, according to a certain lineage of thought. Isn’t that odd? Even tragic?
Your work has always danced between the low-tech and the high-concept, the analog and the speculative. How do you stay grounded while working so closely with machine intelligence?
Oscar Wilde once said, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” I stay grounded by doing it very badly. By doing it all wrong.
AIR is full of thinkers, artists, and edge-walkers. Is there anyone or anything you’re especially curious to encounter while you’re here?
Vic Brooks, Molly Mciver, and the rest of the AIR team have gathered an embarrassment of riches. I’m grateful for the chance to meet them all. One of the things I’ve come to believe, having spent years now in the machine learning space in my own peculiar way, is that intelligence isn’t what you bring to a conversation or chat: it is what arises from the conversation or chat. So I suppose what I’m most curious about encountering is the presence of genuine intelligence. I’m hungry for it. Aren’t you?