Feileacan Kirkbride McCormick
entropic.contagion
Life is a transformative process, an expression of thermodynamics and lossy accelerations of entropy. The humble image is relative to life as a virus to the cell, neither a life-form, nor inert matter: a self-propagating (if successful) organisation of energy into temporarily structured form. Transmission, as observed in the biological realm, is hardly lossless. As reproduction consumes resources, degrades and unbalances greater systems, similarly, through continuous re-contextualisation is the degradation and corruption of the image inevitable.
Taking the form of a meditation on digital decay, this particular framing of the memetic takes its focal point in memes, imagining the mundane interface as a series of ecosystems wherein the memes are spread & interact through external influence. Unable to meaningfully propel themselves, their orchestration (through the artists whim and whimsy) leads to mutated, interacting states where the mutative nature of our virtual culture is made tangible. A fleeting stream of the familiar interspersed with the .jpg version of body horror, a state of un-natural reproduction.
Through the use of cellular automata combined with neural networks (NCA, or Neural Cellular Automata), the memes embrace the mutable substrate of which they are continuously interacting with. Further, as both the process of memetic spread of memes, as well as the use of neural networks (commonly mis-represented as "AI") are entropic accelerators, the resulting morphing imagery becomes steadily more degraded over time. This performative questioning of our future through the lens of automation appears ever more degraded and compressed.
The resulting work offers a not unlikely vision of a future dominated by the generative, an accelerated entropic condition of ever greater viral nature.
Sound by Robert M. Thomas. Read more about the work here.
(images from inaugaral exhibition of the work at NXT Museum, NL)
Feileacan Kirkbride McCormick is an artist whose practice focuses on information (not only as data, but as computation, language, and systemic/memetic structures) and complex systems.
As one half of the artistic duo Entangled Others, a practice that is a shared collaboration with the artist Sofia Crespo, his focus continues particular threads of artistic research and creation encountered in their duo practice, but extends notions of complex systems into the realm of emergent phenomena.
Much of his work is oriented around the notion of performative "sensemaking": a means attempting to understand to the bafflingly complex, often counter-intuitive context of modern, entangled life. Rather than attempt to reduce this complexity, instead complex systems are created/appropriated to act as sensory organs and articulations, allowing of a tracing and interaction that attempts resonance before comprehension.