Presence and Erasure
Presence and Erasure is a portrait machine that explores the reality of automated facial recognition and how people relate to their self-image, instinctively and emotionally. Within a given spatial domain, the artwork constantly scans for faces in the vicinity and photographs them. When the artwork’s algorithm detects a certain quality within a photograph, this image is temporarily printed at large scale by exposing a photochromic surface to light impulses. Each automated portrait remains for little more than a minute, before gradually dissolving into blankness. RANDOM INTERNATIONAL began to combine transient mark-making with automated portraiture early on in their practice, in 2008. Presence and Erasure marks the latest development in this body of work and assumes a minimal, industrial aesthetic that references their earliest studies on this theme. The physical impact of facial recognition and machine vision is emphasised by the exposure of the printing process itself, contrasted against the aesthetic of the high resolution portraits generated. RANDOM INTERNATIONAL intend this as a counter to the perception of surveillance footage as always being low quality, aiming to create a deeper reflection on the nature of surveillance today as well as the resounding cognitive and emotional dissonances.

Oresteia Opera

Scored for soloists, mixed chorus, children’s chorus and chamber ensemble, Iannis Xenakis’ music for Oresteia has been cited as “ruggedly dissonant” since its 1987 première in Sicily. A wooden-planked stage is empty save three platforms, one each for the chamber players and percussion, another for a drummer on a separate perch. On a high screen to start, a loop video shows an almost-naked woman stretched out face down in a bathtub who is being hosed down uninterruptedly with water. No forewarning, and the clip changes to a thick forest, a small girl being physically abused by an adult man. While the same video images reappear at the end of the opera, but it’s nebulous soft-edged shapes –mood landscapes as it were – that are the usual backdrop for the 90-minute piece.

Gabriel’s Dissonance

I am a fashion stylist based in Chicago. I am working mostly on avant garde editorials that can be featured in magazines. I consider fashion as art and try to push my creativity out of the norm.