Algorithmic Pareidolia, Incinerator Art Space, Willoughby, 2017.

Algorithmic Pareidolia is a series of experimental video, installation and robotic artworks that explore how our understanding of reality is increasingly simulated and automated. Algorithmic pareidolia, is used in machine learning by programming computers with deep digital neural networks, modelled on the brain. Recent developments in programming neural networks have provided significant insights into the way humans and computers ‘think’, exciting both the scientific and creative communities. For example, in 2015 Google released its Deep Dream software, a computer vision program which uses a convolutional neural network to find and enhance patterns in images via algorithmic pareidolia. The results are dream-like and hallucinogenic images, that rival the work of Giuseppe Archicembalo and Hieronymus Bosch. This raises the question of whether or not, we can ever consider artificial intelligence to be creative? In his new video works Marynowsky combines art history and popular culture by applying the techniques of the special effects industry onto audio visual field recordings of his surroundings. He asks…. What will Sydney look like in the future? How does cinematic popular culture influence the way we understand our surroundings? Will we some day live in completely simulated worlds? For the exhibition Marynowsky launches his latest robotic work Synth-Bot, which investigates how humans perceive notions of robotic performance and agency via a robotic arm that creates music, by playing a synthesiser. In this work Marynowsky foresees that in the very near future we will pay money to see robotic bands and musicians.

CECI N’EST PAS…(THIS IS NOT) An essay on Wade Marynowsky’s Algorithmic Pareidolia Indicating something that is not there (THIS is NOT) is a Surrealist ideology present in the work of painter Rene Magritte titled The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) (1929)[1]. Wade Marynowsky’s new body of work examines this notion in relation to the digitally automated realms of new media and interactive art in the exhibition Algorithmic Pareidolia as part of the Willoughby Council’s 2017 Visual Arts Biennial Kaleidoscope. His works explore a world not static, but constantly in a state of flux, the psychological condition of pareidolia describes a reality in which we see things that aren’t really there[2][3]. To create and exhibit experimental digital films and robotic sculpture intonates that the worlds we regularly inhabit are ones of hyperreality, accelerated, saturated and mediated modes of reality. In a post-modernist, pop-cultural and science- fiction landscape, Marynowsky explores Jean Baudrillard’s definition of simulated existence, one in which there is no defined original and precession simulacra is dominant [4]. His films become manipulated montages of carefully curated but disparately collated original content, the whole simulation preceding what was actually filmed. In the films’ movements one gets the feeling of a mimicked representation of real and recognisable components. An uncanny feeling draws one in, all encompassing and discomforting, but too intriguing to disengage. Comprised of 7 film montages and a collaborative work with Julian Knowles featuring a robot playing a synthesiser, closer inspection of this exhibition reveals elements disruptive to the cohesive whole of the artworks. Deep (Purple) Dream invites its’ audience in with movements similar to that of a portal. The trajectory of this experience is slowed down as the AI-generated visuals propel one through a magenta-drenched landscape filled with garish reflections of our own tunnel vision. Skewed renditions of animals present the hallucinations of intelligent systems when trained on too many images to make sense of. This is machine learning when creatively overwhelmed, eliciting the same sentiment of an over-populated and uncanny environment of an Hieronymus Bosch painting. This tension is released in Yesterday’s Futurist, where a man in a suit sits motionless at the edge of a cliff, his head exploded but his body still breathing. What remains of his head is an orange Star Wars lightsaber and a stream of white particles that constantly emit energy, like the light at the end of fibre optic cables. As though a whisper to real life, the wind blows the jacket open while long grass sways slowly in the foreground. Closely connected to this work is When Are You Coming Up Here? (Blue Rose). Conceived when watching Surrealist filmmaker David Lynch’s new Twin Peaks series (2017)[5] , Marynowsky was inspired by the tools with which simulated filmic worlds are now created. In Yesterday’s Futurist, the artist’s head has exploded; only to reappear in (Blue Rose) reciting random nonsense. The frayed edges of fibre optics in Yesterday’s Futurist emerge as the stars in (Blue Rose), visualising what Philip Brophy calls particulate cinema, described as follows, “ Despite its blatant unreality, this is more like observing through a microscope the sub-atomic activity which constitutes any occurrence of material existence… Microscopic analysis yields supra-scopic outcomes: the visualisation of data more properly refers to how it makes mathematical probabilities visible.” [6] The Flying Castle of Bennelong Point features the iconic Sydney Opera House as a spaceship atop a large boulder, hovering over Sydney’s beaches and reversing the tides. Tiny people walk around this Opera House spaceship, further articulating the particularity and microscopic nature of the cinemascape Marynowsky is manipulating. The Smoking Eye of Mascot depicts a smoking sun that cannot quit its addiction to aviation fuel, and so sends heatwaves from the empty communications tower throughout New South Wales. Humans are wary that smoking can lead to disease, but The Smoking Eye inhales and exhales a dark, seductively beautiful smoke beneath hazy heatwaves. Again, we recognise components of intermingled realities, the essences of which have never really existed. After taking in these film montages, the mimicry is repeated in the anthropomorphic nature of the Synthesiser-Robot (Synth-Bot). There is sound and movement, but again, THIS is NOT what we expect. Anthropomorphism is similar and closely linked to pareidolia. Where pareidolia can include seeing a face where there isn’t one, anthropomorphism is attributing human characteristics or behaviours to non- human agents, for example robots. Synth-Bot investigates how humans perceive notions of robotic performance and agency by playing a synthesiser, thus creating music. The gestures are slow moving and familiar at a glance. They echo the formal bow of a Japanese Samurai; or the wave of the person you know well and see often, but whose name escapes you. It performs the familiar functions of a performer playing electronic music by pushing buttons and twisting knobs and sliding faders to manipulate simulated sounds. Where we recognise the movements being mimicked by the robotic arm, what comes out are dark, brooding noises reminiscent of science-fiction films. As the robot’s repertoire of compositions grows through machine learning, so too does the possibility to one day improvise and perform in a concert setting, as a live agent performing autonomously. Algorithmic Pareidolia is one of three Council curated exhibitions within the Willoughby Visual Arts Biennial featuring landscapes currently being traversed by contemporary artists. Over urban landscapes, coves, cities, cliffs, and cityscapes, Marynowsky boldly explores that which isn’t there, but that we largely exist within. THIS is NOT your regular art exhibition, but you are drawn in by that which is not, and captured by what precedes that which is.

[1] Harris, Dr. Beth, and Dr. Steven Zucker. Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe)(1929). Expressionism to Pop Art, Art between the Wars: The Avante-Garde and the Rise of Totalitarianism: Surrealism. Short video from the KHAN Academy. Accessed 22 August 2017.

[2] Kaleidoscope. Willoughby Visual Arts Biennial. Willoughby City Council. Accessed 22 August 2017.

3] Roth, Ben. DeepDream Algorithmic Pareidolia and the Hallucinatory Code of Perception. The Door of Perception. 13 October 2015. Accessed 22 August 2017. http://doorofperception.com/2015/10/google-deep-dream-inceptionism/

4] Hegarty, Paul. Jean Baudrillard: live theory. London: Continuum: 2004. ISBN 0-8264-6283-9.

5] Frost, Mark and David Lynch. Twin Peaks, 2017. Internet and Movie Database (IMDb). Accessed 22 October 2017.

Brophy, Philip. Particulate cinema: Visualising data and posthuman physics. Artlink. Vol. 37, No. 1, Mar 2017. p. 45, 48.

Deborah Turnbull Tillman © 2017