“AI is just us. AI is human labor obfuscated through a terminology called AI” – Holly Herndon
Prism is a series of films documenting the rapid development of generative AI video systems in the style of the “Up” documentary films directed by Michael Apted and Paul Almond. Each iteration of Prism takes a “state of the art” (at the time of creation) local AI video generation tool and combines their output to a series of prompts into an abstract (or sometimes, highly realistic) audio-visual collage.
Generative AI typically considers the prompt an art form in itself, with the specific sequence of words constructing exactly what the artist intends. Prism reverses this dynamic, with single or two word prompts that are poetic, vague, and open to a wide range of interpretation: “memory”, “together”, “body”, “home”, “tomorrow”, “commute”, “nightclub”, “us”, “together”, “body”, “home”, “fear”, “waiting room”, “commute” and “waiting for”.
Through these open ended and abstract prompts the AI reveals insights about what it’s been trained on, including representations and biases. Beyond this it also reveals the deeper materiality of the network. The imperfections and glitches, often referred to as “hallucinations”, in this case are instructive – revealing the recursive mathematical structures and fractal-like details within the high-dimensional space which stores the model’s perception of the world. The AI model provides a non-human perspective on human data and experience – a diffracted view, like a prism that splits the light into reconfigurations.
AI is a profoundly transformative technology. It is inherently “us”, as Herndon says – it is our data, our patterns that it diffracts. It is a form of pattern recognition, classification and replication, but then as the patterns get more detailed the question arises – what does it mean to be human? And how clear a pattern do we need to see before we recognize ourselves?
The Prism series of films constitutes an “archive of archives”. Since every AI model can be considered an “archive”, each subsequent update to the series serves as a reference point to the preceding films. By contrasting the responses to the prompts in the later films, it becomes possible to perceive the pace of change within this technological space through a subjective and poetic exploration.
Exhibitions
“Not Yet But Soon” – Hypha, Sugar House Island, November 2024
Goldsmiths University, London, December 2023
“Navigating the Not Yet” – Public Lecture @ Tickbird and Rhino, January 2024
