specious upwellings

This series was presented by ARTXCODE on Verse.

“the more we are able to unveil the innate entanglement of all around us, the less does any one image of the more-than-human have any real relevance or accuracy in its depiction”

This series exists as part of an ongoing study concerning questions of entanglement, and how all that surrounds us interacts ceaselessly in one form or another. The initial culmination of these experiments involved multiple years of exploration and multi-disciplinary collaboration which took the form of the work 'decohering delineation' (2022-2023), a tentative attempt at making tangible the innate interconnection of all that we tend to assume as distinct, clearly delimited forms of life, ecosystems, etc.

Normally, image-making in the context of digital, generative systems arguably defaults to the role of the subject as an initial input such as data, or observationally determined rulesets which are typical examples of this. Whilst the results are naturally striking, the role of subject risks passivity, or a degradation from existing as an equal presence when included primarily as an aesthetic raw material. Addressing this particular framing is a non-trivial endeavour, however, we wanted to explore how we might consider certain technologies as conceptually useful means to sketch out stepping stones to alternative approaches to shared image-making as artists.

To this end we desired to inject the now mundane approach of dataset → model → output wherein dataset was the total of influence from the subject in question, with an iterative interaction where the subject intervenes in the decision-making process of generation, one that would leave its decisive traces upon the final work itself. In this case, the subject of this branch of tireless aquatic fascination, namely the phenomena of oceanic upwellings.

Here, two variations of the same image, alternative outputs from the same starting point evolve as a collage. The coherence of one or the other composition varies based upon a per-tile decision process driven through the binary states of ‘branch A’ and ‘branch B’ which are ‘entangled’ with an image, or images, of the subject matter depicted. Entanglement influences a naive circuit, which in turn imprints clear traces of the subject’s interactions upon the collaged result of the generative process.

The circuit, using a combination of computer vision coupled with a simple, mostly simulated quantum circuit, allows the subject to influence the composition as it is generated through its collaging of two ‘branches’ of a generative output intended to depict itself. This process leaves visible artefacts that in turn are integrated into the generative process, thus indelibly marking the image as clearly artificial. We can no longer claim any pretence of "accuracy" in the resulting representation of the more-than-human.

A pleasing moment of serendipity that this study triggered is precisely this: the more we are able to unveil the innate entanglement of all around us, the less does any one image of the more-than-human have any real relevance or accuracy in its depiction. It is this paradox of tricky, messy interaction that forms the core of each of the nine specious upwellings.

An upwelling is a surge of cold, nutrient rich water, from the depths of the ocean. This water is crucial to nurturing a dizzying variety of oceanic biodiversity and many terrestrial denizens that depend on it for sustenance. Yet its cyclical motions are at a scale too vast and gradual for us to perceive directly. Instead we must contend with allowing the knowledge of such phenomena to enrich our only interface to it: the life we encounter in underwater excursions, imagery of which inspired and shaped the works in this series.

We decided to have each individual work be a diptych consisting of a monochrome-colour pair. While depicting the same result, they offer two very different readings of the same image. This is our attempt at trying to convey the tension we encountered in depicting something that exists at a scale far too vast for the body to experience directly in any meaningful manner.

Entangled Others