The Little Machine. 15 Jul 2024

 

The evolution of virtual reality games has precipitated the questioning of reality to the point where we might wonder what is real, and movies such as The Matrix (1999) and eXistenZ (1999) exemplify such questioning. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence raise the possibility of simulating human existence.

The exhibition Are you living in a computer simulation?, subtitled How human lives are shaped and structured by simulations and imagined realities, brings together some new and existing artwork that amusingly addresses our perceptions and characterisations of reality and virtual reality.

 

The exhibition title Are you living in a computer simulation? is taken from a 2003 essay by British philosopher Nick Bostrom who controversially argued that we are ‘almost certainly living in a computer simulation’ (Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 211). He notes that, with enough computing power, future generations could run simulations of their forebears — and we might be the conscious simulations of those forebears.

 

The exhibition subtitle How human lives are shaped and structured by simulations and imagined realities has been added by the exhibition curators Eleen Deprez and Michael Newall. Amusing though some of the artwork may seem, the exhibition addresses the serious issue of constructions of the self and one’s interactions with real and imagined others.

 

 The Little Machine gallery shopfront, Regent Arcade, photo © Sam Roberts

 

The video entitled HORSE PRESENTS by artist ensemble HORSE (Gilbert Garden, Freya-Francezka Holfeld and collaborators) comprises a long monologue by a sock puppet musing on the question of whether we live in a simulation and whether one’s real self can emerge from within one’s public (ie, contrived) persona. They invite you to imagine waking up in a changed — transitioned — form and think about how that might affect your personal relationships. The monologue forms half a conversation in which the viewer can imagine participating, as if talking to a virtual person. Shown in the gallery’s front window, the video intrigues passersby.

 

Roy Ananda has created a sculpture, entitled Wizard (actual size) representing Gandalf of JRR Tolkein’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, an imaginary character in physical form. The sculpture was evidently created in a process beginning with the scanning of a figurine (made by the artist) of the actor playing the role described in Tolkein’s novels. The scanned image of the figurine was then enlarged and printed, and the printed elements of the figure were then attached to wooden forms assembled to create a new version of the figure. Thus, the physical form we see is several removes from Tolkein’s description, and the process of its creation represents the transformation of the virtual form into a physical one through a sequence of simulations.

 

Installation view showing L – R Suzanne Treister MTB [Military Training Base] (2009), Roy Ananda, Wizard (actual size) (2024), and Danny Jarratt, The Coco Desert and The Intestinal Township (2019), photo © Sam Roberts

 

Danny Jarratt has produced a computer game, entitled NEO GLITCH CITY that the viewer can play, and two paintings, entitled The Coco Desert and The Intestinal Township, representing glitches in that game, as if the game cannot be successfully completed. We might wonder if there are glitches in our descendants’ computer simulations of us.

 

Ash Tower shows two small paintings, Untitled 1 and Untitled 2, that have a photographic character but whose imagery is abstruse, as if suggesting an alternate reality. Evidently, these works play on Bostrom’s idea of interplay between different levels of reality.

 

Ash Tower, Untitled 1 and Untitled 2 (2024), photo © Sam Roberts

 

A 1992 painting entitled Wishful Thinking/Who’s Playing Now? by British artist Suzanne Treister (resident in Adelaide in the 1990s) shows multicoloured blobs suggesting pixilated forms floating in a cloudy blue sky — like Jarett, ironically representing computer imagery in physical form.

 

Treister’s three-screen video work MTB [Military Training Base] (2009) appropriates notable landmarks — the Unabomber’s hideout, the ruins of the Queen of Sheba’s palace and artist Donald Judd’s compound — for use as locations for games in which the player targets enemies, suggesting that any site could become the location of warfare, and using game technology to simulate real-world situations. We might wonder whether we are other people’s avatars, as in eXistenZ.

 

In their video Tell me what you see outside, the performance artist duo In Her Interior (V Barratt and Francesca da Rimini) conduct a conversation in which they imagine a world outside the electronic world they inhabit, a world of societal collapse. One voice asks the other: “Tell me what you see outside, tell me everything,” and the other responds. The video shows images of Barratt’s virtual counterpart, as if now existing only as a digital entity in a computer simulation and thus reflecting Bostrom’s proposition.

 

The cyberfeminist collective VNS MATRIX’s 1991 manifesto is on display. (VNS MATRIX is not related to the movie The Matrix.) As two of the four co-founders of VNS MATRIX, da Rimini and Barratt continue VNS MATRIX’s critiques of gender and technology across three decades.

 

The exhibition catalogue by Deprez and Newall takes the form of a game, conducting the reader on a gamer’s journey through the artworks, so that the reader acts out the role of viewer in dialogue with the artists. Depending on which choices you make, you might die or you might encounter some artworks or some books on the subject, all the while engaging with a strange creature who discourses on theories of the self and simulation, referring to thinkers as diverse as Plato and Jean Baudrillard as well as Bostrom, and linking their ideas to the artworks.

 

There is a selection of relevant books on the gallery shelf for the viewer to browse, including some well-known texts such as Tolkein’s, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and texts on gaming, cyberfeminism and internet art.

 

Occupying a shop in Regent Arcade, The Little Machine is strategically positioned to attract a wide audience, and its exhibitions are insightfully curated, offering valuable opportunities for artistic development and experimentation, and inviting consideration of the philosophy of contemporary art.

 

Chris Reid

 

When: 29 June – 27 July

Where: Little Machine, Regent Arcade, Adelaide

More info: thelittlemachine.com

 

A talk about the exhibition will be held at 4.00pm on 20 July at the gallery.

 

Editor’s Note: Chris Reid is a colleague of Roy Ananda, Dr Ash Tower and Freya-Francezka Holfeld at Adelaide Central School of Art.