Travess Smalley: set to some of
Donnerstag, 12. Mai 2016 - 18:00 Uhr
Galerie Andreas Huber
– Byung-Chul Han
The computer plays a central role in Travess Smalley?s artistic practice. Smalley produces thousands and tens of thousands of digital images with the aid of stored Photoshop actions and scripts of his own in programming languages to automated operations in various programs. But despite an almost obsessive concern with digital and mass images, it is clear for Smalley that ?computer animation alone is not interesting. It?s the choices we make from what?s automated.? The ability to delay is essential to this.
In his book The Burnout Society, philosopher Byung-Chul Han diagnoses the current day with a lack of negativity: ?In a pure state, activity only prolongs what is already available,? he writes. ?In contrast, a real turn to the Other presupposes the negativity of an interruption. Only by the means of making-pause can the subject of action thoroughly measure the sphere of contingency (which is unavailable when one is simply active).?
The works currently being shown in the Galerie Andreas Huber are symbols of a collaboration between human and machine, user and computer?and a statement that decision processes become all the more important when faced with an enormous quantity of images or data. Starting from pools of 10,000 or more images, Smalley looks for deviations, for images that stick out in the mass, that have become outsiders by chance. He compares himself to an orchid breeder: ?Like when breeding orchids, I?m looking for the mutations.? When he finds an interesting mutation, he alters the current script in order to intensify the mutation.
Along with 57 artist books, the exhibition also includes prints of images that were produced and selected in this way. Another element is the product of a collaboration with the author and poet Paul Soulellis, the editor of Printed Web. With the intention of jointly reflecting on the programming language used for image production, a text was created that points to conversation-like traits, but that is clearly fragmented and fragile. This is based on a transcribed workshop conversation between Smalley and Soulellis, which was reconstructed by means of the Markov Chain algorithm.
Despite the intense exchange with mechanical functions and automated operations, Smalley?s artistic practice is by no means dry. On the contrary. He describes it as rather messy: ?My practice is intuitive, experimental, and un-calculated. My studio is piles of picture books that I?ve made and stacks of computer print outs, photo copies, and wet paintings on the floor.?
An initial question about what might happen if we could teach computers to make drawings quickly became an examination of the topic of drawing itself; an interest in artificial intelligence became an examination of one?s own intelligence, freedom of choice, and taste in the era of algorithms.
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Afterparty @ Wiener Freiheit:
Joint exhibition afterparty of Galerie Andreas Huber & Pinacoteca
Thursday, May 12, 2016, 10 pm
Wiener Freiheit, Schönbrunnerstraße 25, 1050 Vienna
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