Showing posts with label Illuminate Adelaide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Illuminate Adelaide. Show all posts

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Wisdom of AI Light - Illuminate Adelaide - Review


The first 10 minutes of Wisdom of AI Light is totally bewitching. You are suddenly in the womb of a space that is shifting and swirling all around you. An exquisite soundtrack helps you centre as you drift aimlessly around trying to find where to be. You can wander, stand, sit, or turn but most people found their space quickly and remained still – mesmerised. Pictures and patterns and shapes fold and bend and soar in an ever-changing visual landscape that evokes childlike wonder. The Da Vinci segment teased with glimpses of the known – the Mona Lisa, Christ, and Vitruvian Man – before dissolving back into an abstract world of a different kind of beauty. The kind of beauty that results from artificial intelligence going to work on 20,000 of Da Vinci’s artworks. (One can’t watch this without wondering what Da Vinci may have thought of this if he were alive today!)

Occasionally in this short 30 minute show we are reminded of the raw data that is the basis of these projections and surrounded by thousands of thumbnail sketches scrolling rapidly past in multiple directions.

The Poetic AI segment churns out electronic wizardry from the text and images of great thinkers of the past. Letters, numbers, shapes form new creations that might be called a new kind of literacy – a literacy based on sensation rather than thought, on feeling rather than meaning.

The Data Monolith segment explodes the past literally as archaeological stonework bursts into fragments and spin out across the room to later reform as solid walls.

Everything is changing all of the time whichever way you look and in a strange way you start to go a bit numb and wonder about yourself in all of this. Where do I belong in this new form of expression? It’s all extraordinary; blindingly dazzling. Because we know the raw material for this production stems from history’s greatest minds and some of humanity’s greatest achievements it is hard not to dwell on what it all might mean. Or is it better to turn off your cognitive self and just immerse yourself in the wonder of it all?

Musically the show divides quite radically into two parts. The flowing, soothing score from Ludovici Einaudi is utterly compatible with Da Vinci’s time. The music for the other segments was much more abrasive, modern, mechanical – robotic even. Returning to something more ethereal for the segments connected to space and dark matter might have served to better separate them thematically and maintain the level of interest towards the end of the show.

Shakespeare’s words were probably incorporated in the Poetic segment somewhere. It was he who wrote ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The Wisdom of AI Light felt a bit like that. Like a metaphor for contemporary times, it is fast moving, seductive, random, visually astounding, and shows off incredibly impressive use of emerging technologies – it all looks and sounds so impressive. It looks and sounds as if it should all be deeply meaningful. It is immensely entertaining, but I suspect life’s mysteries are more likely to be solved sitting under a tree on a sunny day, or by the sea at sunset.

(This article also published on The Clothesline.)

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Illuminate Adelaide – Light Cycles

 


Botanic Gardens, Sun 18 Jul 

Light Cycles is one of the flagship events of Illuminate Adelaide, and has been created by Montreal-based multimedia studio Moment Factory. The light and sound installations that entrance as you wander the lit path through the darkness are tailored to specific parts of the gardens. The bamboo garden becomes this wondrous spectacle of dancing light on the densely packed bamboo stalks. Mesmerising beams of light dance and bounce of trees on the other side of the lake in a hypnotic, wondrous spectacle. Elsewhere a myriad of twinkling lights gives the effect of wandering through vast open fields. And the beautiful Victorian glass (Palm House) seemed like it has been sitting there for a hundred plus years just waiting for Light Cycles to realise its full potential.

Each installation is accompanied by soundscapes that are part music, part sound effects. They tantalise as you draw near the next installation and perfectly complement the visual fantasies on offer.

It was a brilliant decision to hold this event in winter. OK – so a few nights may be lost to poor weather – but dragging yourself out into the cold winter night makes you somehow appreciate the whole experience even more. The cold no longer matters as you’re transported to a world of fantasy and wonder – just a little bit Zen really!

No doubt everyone wandering through Light Cycles is aware of how fortunate we are to be living virtually COVID free in South Australia. So it was alarming that the early part of the session I attended was a logjam of people in long queues ignoring social distancing and not wearing masks. Organisers have to sort this. Let fewer people in per session and monitor the crowd movement to keep people properly spaced. (As I write Illuminate Adelaide management are working on a plan to address this issue.)

But once past the logjam it was possible to enjoy the rest of the circuit wandering at a leisurely pace and let the senses take over; let your eyes, ears and mind explore the colourful darkness as art, light, technology and sound transform the gardens into – yes it’s a cliché – a winter wonderland!

POSTSCRIPT: 3 days later Adelaide went into a 7 day COVID lockdown. Hopefully this wonderful event can re-emerge on Jul 28th ....

Paulina Lenoir: Puella Eterna

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