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Avispish is a piece initially created to be displayed on multiple synchronized screens.
Each screen displays an animation of a head that began as a self-portrait scanned and sculpted in 3D. In a second instance, a facial capture was made to record different human gestures and thus generate a visual narrative with multiple beings conversing with each other.
The concept that surrounds this piece is the idea of metamorphosis.
We understand that life is always the regeneration of the non-living, as a loop between one realm and the other// One stage and the other. At the same time, this force allows every living being to unfold into multiple forms simultaneously, becoming a plurality of forms.
If any creatures know what metamorphosis is all about, these are the insects. Let's take wasps as an example. If we compare their morphology in their larva stage and in their adult stage, we could think that they are two different species. Thus, metamorphosis for these organisms implies that within the same life line, they will end up going through multiple experiences. These beings have the capacity to contain diverse forms over the course of their existence.
In this same way, human life unfolds upon its imagination to create technologies that allows it to expand and become something else that is in turn part of itself. Techniques, procedures and designs are refined to exist in a different place, with a digital body embodying an avatar
Here metamorphosis would be the engine that would allow two incompatible bodies to belong to the same individual. In this case, the nature of technology allows the generation of non-living beings animated by living beings. Here we can see a metamorphosis from a biological entity with tangible matter to a digitally animated non-living entity.
One of the most widespread techniques to create this type of simulations in recent times is motion capture. This technique allows through the sensing of the body, to give a human gesture to a machinic entity, in the act of making a metamorphosis where technology allows us to simulate another life without leaving our form. Unlike insects, these beings only exist on the virtual plane, but they allow us to test morphologies other than our own, conveyed by our body.
Something that cannot be ignored is that we know that the capture of data is widely used for control. Refined machines feed artificial intelligence algorithms. All capturable data is food for datasets/Machine Learning.
In this context, I ask myself: What does poetry say about facial capture?
With a slightly gentle and slightly severe look, the looped faces of these creatures displayed on the screen evoke the poetic gesture a gathering of machinic affections animated by 100% human breath. A plurality of looped forms that exist only because they have been something else before.
A narrative that is constructed from the fusion of science, fiction and life and that seeks to recreate the imaginary of metamorphosis as a poetic gesture of the post-nature that we create together with living and non-living species. - JS
JF: What did you discover about yourself through the process of creating Avispish?
JS: I discovered a bunch of characters that were living inside me and were asking to come out. During the last years I was mainly dedicated to the creation of environments that contained stories and had particular properties. Over time, I began to perceive that those spaces that seemed empty, were actually nests, where future creatures with reminiscences of human characteristics inhabited. I could say that what I do now is to give form to that invisible thing that was beating silently in those "uninhabited" spaces.
Beyond the fact that raising these characters allowed me to go deeper into the techniques of motion capture and use technology as a way to materialize internal states, it was also a necessity to make a piece with the idea that comes back to me from time to time, of having once been mixed with other species. Now we have the sensation of being separated, divided, and precisely what I see happening in my creative process is that my imagery wants to return to this idea of interconnected beings that have characteristics from different roots, and that is why I decided to start modeling the character as a real reference that metamorphoses from one state to another in a fluid way.
JF: As humanity becomes increasingly digitised, how do you view the morphology of human with more-than-human futures in the post-anthropocene?
JS: I am viewing them with a percentage of fantasy and faith in humanity. Because I imagine morphologies that have for example antennas so that human beings can hear each other more and better. I also imagine beings that look into each other's eyes and connect without the need for words. I imagine exactly what I feel we are missing. Technology can expand our capabilities, yet the main challenge we face today is the question of why pursue those capabilities, whether it is for control and concentration of power or to inspire new analyses of the contemporary world.
Digital technology today is giving us the possibility to change our morphology quickly. We can see ourselves, experiment ourselves, try on different forms and identities without getting completely detached from our own nature. Digitality allows us to easily try morphological changes without losing the real body.
What I think is that the technical implementation needs to have an intention.The mutations should invite us to remember that we used to coexist with other species.
JF: In what ways are we able to democratise the world of machine-learning, to subvert algorithmic bias of race and gender prevalent in facial capture used as a mechanism for control? How can we safeguard the future of AI so that it is a liberating rather than destructive force?
JS: This question is an epoch question, it is difficult to answer because we are currently still thinking about how to answer it. So any answer is going to leave something out, it is part of a process that is unfolding, and that we will be able to elaborate on further into the future. This involves all aspects of human experience, political, experiential, spiritual, economic, scientific, symbolic. I can only answer it from my intuition and a hunch driven from the field of art, which is my subject. What art does is precisely generate metaphors to be able to respond in a more diverse way through the imagination. Where it is so standardized what is bad and good, the task of art is to get rid of the dialectics that condition us at an intellectual level, in order to allow new answers and intuitions to appear, which in the best of cases, can be transformed into solutions. For me, art inaugurates a fertile field for people to ask themselves questions, what I seek is to share spaces and experiences where the body is also a device that generates information.
I seek to generate stories that promote exchange and listening in pursuit of a more organic coexistence. I do not seek to create stories that feed feelings of fear and separation. That is precisely what happens to us today at an emotional level with AI, it awakens fear in us. We grew up with discourses and fictions that always made us enemies with the otherness, with the invasion of other species, cultures or even technology, with whatever is different. Coming back to the question, how can we democratize from art? For me it is from a more sensorial and not so intellectual approach, because at the end of the day, the intellectual is always cultural, but the body is the same body everywhere. The nature of our mind categorizes in order to understand, the artistic experience could be an attempt to free us from categories for a while to inhabit something that cannot yet be intellectualized.
On the other hand, the AI confronts us again with the fear we have about a superior intelligence that could come to dominate us. This is the greatest fear, from which fiction was also fed, we are terrified that something will come and displace us from this position that we have of "being the most intelligent species on earth". The notion of "enemy" that was created and continues to be created and consumed these days, paralyzes us against what we don't know or grows in ways we can't anticipate. For AI to be a liberating rather than destructive force we must return to intention.
Images: Avispish by Joaquina Salgado
Avispish is a piece initially created to be displayed on multiple synchronized screens.
Each screen displays an animation of a head that began as a self-portrait scanned and sculpted in 3D. In a second instance, a facial capture was made to record different human gestures and thus generate a visual narrative with multiple beings conversing with each other.
The concept that surrounds this piece is the idea of metamorphosis.
We understand that life is always the regeneration of the non-living, as a loop between one realm and the other// One stage and the other. At the same time, this force allows every living being to unfold into multiple forms simultaneously, becoming a plurality of forms.
If any creatures know what metamorphosis is all about, these are the insects. Let's take wasps as an example. If we compare their morphology in their larva stage and in their adult stage, we could think that they are two different species. Thus, metamorphosis for these organisms implies that within the same life line, they will end up going through multiple experiences. These beings have the capacity to contain diverse forms over the course of their existence.
In this same way, human life unfolds upon its imagination to create technologies that allows it to expand and become something else that is in turn part of itself. Techniques, procedures and designs are refined to exist in a different place, with a digital body embodying an avatar
Here metamorphosis would be the engine that would allow two incompatible bodies to belong to the same individual. In this case, the nature of technology allows the generation of non-living beings animated by living beings. Here we can see a metamorphosis from a biological entity with tangible matter to a digitally animated non-living entity.
One of the most widespread techniques to create this type of simulations in recent times is motion capture. This technique allows through the sensing of the body, to give a human gesture to a machinic entity, in the act of making a metamorphosis where technology allows us to simulate another life without leaving our form. Unlike insects, these beings only exist on the virtual plane, but they allow us to test morphologies other than our own, conveyed by our body.
Something that cannot be ignored is that we know that the capture of data is widely used for control. Refined machines feed artificial intelligence algorithms. All capturable data is food for datasets/Machine Learning.
In this context, I ask myself: What does poetry say about facial capture?
With a slightly gentle and slightly severe look, the looped faces of these creatures displayed on the screen evoke the poetic gesture a gathering of machinic affections animated by 100% human breath. A plurality of looped forms that exist only because they have been something else before.
A narrative that is constructed from the fusion of science, fiction and life and that seeks to recreate the imaginary of metamorphosis as a poetic gesture of the post-nature that we create together with living and non-living species. - JS
JF: What did you discover about yourself through the process of creating Avispish?
JS: I discovered a bunch of characters that were living inside me and were asking to come out. During the last years I was mainly dedicated to the creation of environments that contained stories and had particular properties. Over time, I began to perceive that those spaces that seemed empty, were actually nests, where future creatures with reminiscences of human characteristics inhabited. I could say that what I do now is to give form to that invisible thing that was beating silently in those "uninhabited" spaces.
Beyond the fact that raising these characters allowed me to go deeper into the techniques of motion capture and use technology as a way to materialize internal states, it was also a necessity to make a piece with the idea that comes back to me from time to time, of having once been mixed with other species. Now we have the sensation of being separated, divided, and precisely what I see happening in my creative process is that my imagery wants to return to this idea of interconnected beings that have characteristics from different roots, and that is why I decided to start modeling the character as a real reference that metamorphoses from one state to another in a fluid way.
JF: As humanity becomes increasingly digitised, how do you view the morphology of human with more-than-human futures in the post-anthropocene?
JS: I am viewing them with a percentage of fantasy and faith in humanity. Because I imagine morphologies that have for example antennas so that human beings can hear each other more and better. I also imagine beings that look into each other's eyes and connect without the need for words. I imagine exactly what I feel we are missing. Technology can expand our capabilities, yet the main challenge we face today is the question of why pursue those capabilities, whether it is for control and concentration of power or to inspire new analyses of the contemporary world.
Digital technology today is giving us the possibility to change our morphology quickly. We can see ourselves, experiment ourselves, try on different forms and identities without getting completely detached from our own nature. Digitality allows us to easily try morphological changes without losing the real body.
What I think is that the technical implementation needs to have an intention.The mutations should invite us to remember that we used to coexist with other species.
JF: In what ways are we able to democratise the world of machine-learning, to subvert algorithmic bias of race and gender prevalent in facial capture used as a mechanism for control? How can we safeguard the future of AI so that it is a liberating rather than destructive force?
JS: This question is an epoch question, it is difficult to answer because we are currently still thinking about how to answer it. So any answer is going to leave something out, it is part of a process that is unfolding, and that we will be able to elaborate on further into the future. This involves all aspects of human experience, political, experiential, spiritual, economic, scientific, symbolic. I can only answer it from my intuition and a hunch driven from the field of art, which is my subject. What art does is precisely generate metaphors to be able to respond in a more diverse way through the imagination. Where it is so standardized what is bad and good, the task of art is to get rid of the dialectics that condition us at an intellectual level, in order to allow new answers and intuitions to appear, which in the best of cases, can be transformed into solutions. For me, art inaugurates a fertile field for people to ask themselves questions, what I seek is to share spaces and experiences where the body is also a device that generates information.
I seek to generate stories that promote exchange and listening in pursuit of a more organic coexistence. I do not seek to create stories that feed feelings of fear and separation. That is precisely what happens to us today at an emotional level with AI, it awakens fear in us. We grew up with discourses and fictions that always made us enemies with the otherness, with the invasion of other species, cultures or even technology, with whatever is different. Coming back to the question, how can we democratize from art? For me it is from a more sensorial and not so intellectual approach, because at the end of the day, the intellectual is always cultural, but the body is the same body everywhere. The nature of our mind categorizes in order to understand, the artistic experience could be an attempt to free us from categories for a while to inhabit something that cannot yet be intellectualized.
On the other hand, the AI confronts us again with the fear we have about a superior intelligence that could come to dominate us. This is the greatest fear, from which fiction was also fed, we are terrified that something will come and displace us from this position that we have of "being the most intelligent species on earth". The notion of "enemy" that was created and continues to be created and consumed these days, paralyzes us against what we don't know or grows in ways we can't anticipate. For AI to be a liberating rather than destructive force we must return to intention.
Images: Avispish by Joaquina Salgado