New New New World (NNNW)
by Arjan Guerrero and curated by Karla Noguez
Somers Gallery
5th – 21st April 2023
New New New World (NNNW) is a transmedia ecosystem that involves generative speculation and research, exploring the concept of worldbuilding and the impact of AI, BigGAN, and Machine Learning on the paradigm of images. NNNW intertwines image-world-objects-environment-language from a cognitive perspective. It is created by Arjan Guerrero from from Media Forensis. He is an independent artist and researcher from Mexico City and works with interaction, augmentation, and automation technologies.
This solo show presents the outputs and results of his continuous experimentation in the NNNW universe. Unlike other projects that imagine possible worlds, NNNW pre-presents a particular Virtual Material World, influenced and propagated by the current cognitive world’s transformations and traces. The exhibition features a transversal text co-authored by Pita Arreola and Elliott Burns and some parallel activities organized in collaboration with Rachel Falconer and Doreen Rios.
“Within an abstract space and a virtual reality, across a latent space, the territory of the New New New World
(NNNW) emerges and extends. NNNW is a project of generative speculation and a transmedia ecosystem that explores and puts in tension the constant relationship between the re-presentation of the current world and the pre-presentation of the pending world. From a huge database of categorized images of the current world and its descriptions, Arjan Guerrero generated through Artificial Intelligence (AI), the images-objects of a new world to explore them from different supports and media and thus inquire into the practice of worldbuilding.
For now, the NNNW exists only within the memory of the AI model that, at the time of its launch, knew better
than any other AI what the human world is like: the BigGAN. Every image generated through a BigGAN (a type of Artificial Neural Network3) is the relief of a mathematical flatness. Precisely, this project explores and entangles the techniques and aesthetics of this process of image building. In parallel, with these explorations, he examines the new reflections that AIs, BigGAN or Machine Learning add to the paradigm of images from a cognitive position that simultaneously intertwines: image-world-objects-environment-language.
The name of this transmedia ecosystem also plays with the appearance, performativity and execution of the term “New World” used during the Spanish colonial project. It was an expression that, at the time, generated vast connections and tensions between representational patterns and categories, and the scarce and remote possibility of recognizing new and foreign realities. We can say that assumption, projection and categorization have always added a determining layer of reality to world-making, or rather to worldbuild environments under codes that are humanly legible from certain points of views and languages. For example, as in the imprecise maps of the colony: which were half ascertained, half evoked, and gave wide signs of the cognitive condition that operates in the worlding process and of how re-presentation and pre-presentation collaborate and generate tensions in the production of: social forms, natural categories, material conditions and in the ways in which the “representation of the world” gradually becomes the “experience and presence of the world”. In the case of the NNNW’s “world production” process, this NNNW seeks to be “discovered” at the same time as it was invented and created by an AI.
On the other hand, NNNW has different outputs and explorations that are situated in the middle of gestures
coming from different social disciplines, such as the installation Amaroid, an inverted diorama that in some
aspects of its assembly and set up manifests the relationship of paleontology with its modes of public presentation either in museums or in cataloging records; or as #fossil_to_xeno, a video that shows an animation in which a synthetic object grows from a fossilized object of organic nature. There are the PromptedMonsters, a series of image-objects created by BigGAN and StableDiffusion, created from repeating descriptions of objects that do not exist in the current world, a series that explores concepts such as the “discovering”, “describing” and “constructing” of colonial politics. There are also the SuperRares, an augmented reality installation that presents a series of xenobjects, native objects of the NNNW that approach that approach media epistemologies, material realism and the idea of objects beyond their mass component.” — Curator, Karla Noguez
About the artist:
Arjan Guerrero develops research on agencies, intelligences, and meta-human interdependencies that build worlds through sensitive mediations that connect diagnosis and design of computational systems. He is currently pursuing the MFA Computational Arts at Goldsmiths (University of London). During 2021-22, he co-programmed Materias Mediales, a summer course and a series of conversations on artistic research at its intersection with contemporary techno-sciences.In 2022 he received the Lumen Prize in the category of Global Majority Award. He has been granted by programs such as Programa Arte Ciencia y Tecnologías (ACT) generated between the Universidad Nacional Autónoma se México and the Mexican Ministry of Culture. His work has been exhibited in venuessuch as the Centro Nacional de las Artes, CENART (Mexico City), Slug (Leipzig) and Somers Gallery (London).
新新新世界 (NNNW)
倫敦薩默斯畫廊
四月5日至21日
《新新新世界》 是一個跨媒體生態系統,涉及生成性推測和研究,探索世界構建的概念以及 人工智能、BigGAN 和機器學習對圖像範式的影響。 《新新新世界》 從認知的角度將“圖像-世界-物體-環境-語言”交織在一起。 它由 Media Forensis 的阿爾讓·格雷羅(Arjan Guerrero)創建。 他是來自墨西哥城的藝術家和研究員,從事交互、增強和自動化技術方面的工作。
本次個展展示了他在 《新新新世界》宇宙中不斷實驗的輸出和結果。 與其他想像可能世界的項目不同,《新新新世界》預先呈現了一個特定的虛擬物質世界,受當前認知世界的轉變和痕蹟的影響和傳播。 展覽包括由皮塔·阿雷奧(Pita Arreola) 和 埃利奧特·伯恩斯(Elliott Burns)合著的橫向文本,以及與雷切爾·法爾科納 (Rachel Falconer)和 多琳·里奧斯(Doreen Rios)合作組織的一些平行活動。
“在抽象空間和虛擬現實中,跨越潛在空間,《新新新世界》的領地出現並延伸。《新新新世界》是一個生成性推測和跨媒體生態系統的項目,它探索並強調當前世界的再現與未決世界的預呈現之間的持續關係。 從當前世界的分類圖像及其描述的龐大數據庫中,阿爾讓·格雷羅通過人工智能 (AI) 生成新世界的圖像對象,以從不同的支援和媒體探索它們,從而探究世界構建的實踐。
目前,《新新新世界》僅存在於 AI 模型的記憶中,該模型在啟動時比任何其他 AI 更清楚人類世界的是:BigGAN。 通過 BigGAN(一種人工神經網絡3)生成的每張圖像都是數學平坦度的浮雕。 準確地說,這個項目探索並糾纏了這一圖像構建過程的技術和美學。 與此同時,通過這些探索,他從同時交織的認知位置檢查了 AI、BigGAN 或機器學習添加到圖像範式中的新反射:“圖像-世界-對象-環境-語言”。
這個跨媒體生態系統的名稱也與西班牙殖民項目期間使用的“新世界”一詞的表象、表現力和執行力有關。 當時,這種表達方式在代表性模式和類別之間產生了巨大的聯繫和緊張關係,以及認識新的,來自外部現實的稀缺且遙遠的可能性。 我們可以說,假設、投射和分類總是為世界創造添加一個決定性的現實層,或者更確切地說,根據從某些觀點和語言的人類可讀代碼下的世界構建環境。 例如,在不精確的殖民地地圖中:一半是確定的,一半是被喚起的,並給出了在世界化過程中運作的認知條件以及再現和呈現前如何協作並在世界中產生張力的廣泛跡象 產生:社會形態、自然範疇、物質條件以及“世界的表象”逐漸成為“世界的經驗和存在”的方式。 在 《新新新世界》的“世界生產”過程中,這個 《新新新世界》尋求在它被 AI 發明和創造的同時被“發現”。
另一方面,《新新新世界》 在手勢中間有來自不同的社會學科的輸出和探索,例如裝置 Amaroid,一種倒置的立體模型,在某些情況下它的組裝和設置方面體現了古生物學與其在博物館或編目記錄中的公開展示模式之間的關係; 或#fossil_to_xeno,一段動畫視頻,其中合成物體是從有機自然界的化石物體中生長出來的; PromptedMonsters,是由 BigGAN 和 StableDiffusion 創建的一系列圖像對象,通過對當前世界中不存在的對象的重複描述創建,一系列探索“發現”、“描述”和“構建”等概念 ”的殖民政治;還有 SuperRares,一個增強現實裝置,呈現一系列異形對象,《新新新世界》的原始對象接近媒體認識論、物質現實主義和超越其質量成分的對象的想法。”
——策展人,卡拉·諾格茲
關於藝術家:
阿爾讓·格雷羅 對機構、智能和元人類相互依存關係進行研究,這些相互依存關係通過連接計算系統診斷和設計的敏感中介來構建世界。 他目前正在金史密斯學院(倫敦大學)攻讀 MFA 計算藝術。 在 2021-22 年期間,他與人共同編寫了 Materias Mediales、夏季課程和一系列關於藝術研究與當代技術科學交叉的對話。2022 年,他獲得了全球多數人獎類別中的流明獎。 他獲得了墨西哥國立自治大學和墨西哥文化部之間發起的 Programa Arte Ciencia y Tecnologías (ACT) 等項目的資助。 他的作品曾在 Centro Nacional de las Artes、CENART(墨西哥城)、Slug(萊比錫)和 Somers Gallery(倫敦)等場所展出。
Edited by 编辑 x Xinde Ren 任心得