Siri Black, Marion Carré – ‘An index finger tracing a thought’ & ‘Is it true? The Post-truth Archive Factory’

The Goethe-Institut and Alliance Française Glasgow present an exhibition from artists of their residency, offering new approaches to the increasingly central topic of AI (Artificial Intelligence).

Considering machine learning systems and real-world experiences, artists Siri Black and Marion Carré will present their solo exhibitions developed during their ‘New Forms of Togetherness’ remote residencies.

Between November 2020 and December 2021, artists Siri Black and Marion Carré have been developing work exploring the interdisciplinary and increasingly relevant field of machine learning and creative practice. The works that have emerged include the application of machine learning methods and engage with themes of authenticity and judgment of both human and artificial perception.

‘An Index Finger Tracing A Thought’ – Siri Black
‘An Index Finger Tracing A Thought’ is an ongoing research project into the boundaries between the artificial and the natural, and the meaning of intelligence.

In the iteration of this project, video installation uses the infamous ‘Face on Mars’ as a starting point to discuss facial recognition – and mis-recognition – processes present within both human cognition and machine learning.

From the dark hold pareidolia has over generations of stargazers, to the attempts of facial recognition algorithms to extract and interpret facial landmarks, the furthest reach of human endeavour seems to always end with our own image staring back at us. By using field recordings of the ‘Auld Wives Lifts’ stone carvings, interviews with neuroscientists and amateur astronomers, and experiments with open source machine learning, Siri Black asks whether we can ever escape our own anthropocentrism.

‘Is it true? The Post-truth Archive Factory’ – Marion Carré
‘Is it true? The Post-truth Archive Factory’ is the result of an entanglement between archives and artificial intelligence exploring our relationship to the truth and its counterfeits? This project presents a triptych of artworks which deliberately blur the boundaries between true and false.

By using archives considered to be the ancestors of the tabloids – which have therefore created a complex relationship with reality – Marion Carré generated false textual archives using artificial intelligence. In producing a form of ‘mise en abyme’ of the fictitious, she created artworks using authentic and generated archives to question the conditions of their production, perception and circulation.

Perceived as absolute and unchanging, together the archive and the truth make us forget their complexity and the constructions from which they originate. In the context of liminality between what is true and what is false and the continuous flood of information, we sanctify the truth while participating in the spread of false information in its quest. These forged truths become proof to build our own, freed from reality. If our individual memories are corruptible, how immune is our collective memory to false information?

‘New Forms of Togetherness’ is a cultural collaboration between the Goethe-Institut Glasgow and the Alliance Française Glasgow (together with the Institut Français d’Ecosse) aiming at facilitating new approaches to Artificial Intelligence through the unity of technology and art. The remote residency has been delivered with support from partners the National Library of Scotland, the Social Brain in Action Lab, NEoN Digital Arts and the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. ‘New Forms of Togetherness’ is supported and funded through the Franco-German Cultural Fund.

Siri Black lives and works in Glasgow. Her work is the love child of anachronism and technophilia. Siri Black works across analog and digital photography, film and sound to create installations that seek to trace instances of the couching of state power with technological prowess. Important is the detritus left in the wake of accelerated progress; the gaps of archives, the not so easily translate-able entanglements.

Marion Carré’s lives and works in Paris. She is an entrepreneur, teacher, speaker, author and artist. All of these approaches allow her to explore the relationships between art and artificial intelligence from different angles. In 2017 she co-founded As Mona, a start-up that mobilizes AI to bring audiences and cultural institutions together and to help make culture more accessible. She is sharing her theoretical exploration through talks, teaching and a book entitled ‘Art and Artificial intelligence. Artist in the making?’ published in 2020.