MeMO: Grant Stevens, ‘Fawn in the Forest’

Reviewing Grant Stevens’ Fawn In The Forest Phillip Brophy writes:

I’m writing this while Fawn In The Forest “plays” on my second screen. Or is it “happening”? Maybe it’s “running”. It just keeps going, as if its status as image is somehow in motion, fluid, developing. No past tense here, as in the developed negative and the printed positive. Yes, employing AI to ensure that this video work will continually play with infinite possibilities is a logical move to ward off cheap illusionistic tropes of anthropomorphism, narrative-hedging or humo-moral projection. But let’s not be dumb about what AI is: how it is engineered and implemented, what preparations and pre-coding it mandates, what degree of difference or essence is determined by its usage, how much non-machine-training is required to corral machine-learning, and whether AI’s claims of infinite complexity and non-human infallibility are phenomenologically verifiable.

Read the full text on MeMO website.

Stevens’ work is included in This Brittle Light exhibition and is currently on view at Buxton Contemporary.

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Image: Grant Stevens, Fawn in the Forest, 2020, live streamed procedurally generated computer graphics with sound, assisted by Pat Younis. Courtesy the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney. Light Source Commission, Buxton Contemporary, The University of Melbourne, 2021.