Exhibition Review: Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus
Exhibition on view:
September 6 – October 28, 2023
10:00am – 6:00pm
Tuesday through Saturday
Artist:
Alexander Reben
Location:
bitforms gallery
131 Allen St
New York, NY
Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
Watch our reel from the show!
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Watch our reel from the show! 〰️
Curious to explore the evolving relationship between humans and technology through art? Alexander Reben’s solo show, Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus, at bitforms gallery investigates human connections with algorithms and automation in the most creative way for curious minds to experience this relationship in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
The exhibition features art that reflects human–machine feedback loop, therefore, all kinds of artificial intelligence art — tapestries, prints, colorful polaroid film, as well as an interactive AI art experience. Using his experience as a mathematician and robotics engineer, Alexander Reben creates artwork that’s humorous, absurd, and brilliant.
Untitled (plotter) Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
A plotter in the process of creating art welcomes you into the exhibition — this is Untitled (plotter), which is a soon-to-be-titled installation featuring a continuously drawing machine. The robotic plotter began a composition on the first day of the exhibition and will keep generating the image based on what was made the day prior, until piece is finalized.
“Once the first composition is finalized, Reben shows the drawing to AI to give it a title that will remain as the namesake of the installation.”
Speak Art Into Life, 2023. Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
The artist explores his role as translator between the machine and human art, while allowing the visitors to experience what’s being in conversation with AI is like. Speak Art Into Life, 2023 is an interactive art experience where the user talks into a microphone, describing their dream, and the AI generates four artwork based on the prompt for the user to choose one. As new viewers engage, the language model visually and conceptually connects these images and forms a “linguistic exquisite corpse.”
While the art world is divided among those against AI art and those who create innovative artwork using this technology, Alexander Reben skillfully makes this tool accessible to the visitors while tapping into the idea of a collective creative mind.
Speak Art Into Life, 2023. Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
“Untitled (365) serves as Reben’s own commentary on how machine learning systems understand art, giving the artist the opportunity to remove his preferences and reveal what AI determines as “good” and “artistic.””
Untitled (365) is a generative artwork which utilizes that an automated set of instructions to create a digital image of a new sculpture every day. Therefore, the machine somewhat has creative freedom aside from the initial framework that initiates the automated set. By analyzing what it made the day before and trying to make something similar yet unexpected, the machine is somewhat assigned to a human artist in the modern age.
Generative artwork from 365 series. Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
In line with the continuous human-machine interplay, here’s Chat GPT’s explanation on coming up with the title of the exhibition: “I chose a cactus because it’s already suited to exist in its own time and space, its physicality communicates its evolution over time, and it cannot go back in time to change what it is. But, by being planted in an ambiguous environment of mirrors and digital screens, self-reflection and magnified doubt is explored.”
Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
“The exhibition asks audiences to consider the role of artificial intelligence in the future of art and daily life. By presenting a range of works Alexander Reben created before and after the advent of current-generation large AI models, it also doubles as a brief history of this emergent field.”
Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
Alexander Reben is an artist and MIT-trained roboticist whose work investigates the inherently human nature of the artificial. Using computer technology, machines, and artificial intelligence, the artist creates to shed light on our entanglement to invention, algorithms, and automation, which has inseparably shaped our evolution and the way of being. The artist invites us to understand who we are and consider who we will become in our continued co-development with our artificial creations.
Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
The exhibition is on view at Bitforms Gallery, which was founded in 2001 to support and advocate for the collection of ephemeral, time-based, and digital artworks. They represent artists that critically engage with new technologies and program exhibitions that present digital and new media art forms, such as Pixelweaver by Daniel Canogar and In The Screen I Am Everything by Ellie Pritts.
Also featured in Best Galleries to See Digital Art in NYC 2023
The exhibition is free and open to public at Bitforms Gallery in New York City — visit through October 28th and let us know your thoughts!
Delusions of a Time-Traveling Cactus at bitforms gallery, New York City. Photo credit: Pelle Waldron
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