Unmake Lab describes the future predicted by AI in the unusual tense of ‘non-future.’ The work Ecology for non-futures (2023) is set against the backdrop of ‘burned mountains’ which Unmake Lab has long explored with environmentalists, turning the ‘predictive nature’ of AI into questions about past events. Unmake Lab weaves allegories about the ‘dark mirror,’ humans creating data sets about disasters, trail cams set up to document endangered animals, and taxidermy animals as time-erased representations. In doing so, they describe an ‘ecology’ that is becoming increasingly anthropocentric. Unmake Lab's The Sisyphean Variables (2021), currently being screened at the MMCA Cheongju's Media Canvas in conjunction with the exhibition, reconstructs the myth of Sisyphus by exchanging a series of questions and answers with a natural language generation AI. Unmake Lab feeds statements and phrases found in myths, such as “the stone must always stay on top,” into an AI to generate stories that intertwine humans and non-humans. They develop these stories into bizarre allegories in which humans are satirized by non-human entities, subverting anthropocentric narratives.
▶
Unmake Lab, Ecology for non-futures, 2023, single-channel video, 4K, color, sound, 26 min. 30 sec.
Unmake Lab, The Sisyphean Variables, 2021, natural language generation AI, motion tracking, virtual human, game engine, 4K, 16 min.
What an Artificial World
MMCA Cheongju
26. Apr. 2024. - 25. Aug. 2024
