The Garden of Earthly Delights – Bird, Human and Geology
The Garden of Earthly Delights
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Bird, Human and Geology
The Garden of Earthly Delights – Bird, Human and Geology
4K video, color, sound, 00:01:36, 2021
In the triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, Hieronymus Bosch depicts the Garden of Eden, Earth and Hell in an apocalyptic-like manner, in which the relationship between birds, beasts and humans is in chaos and danger. The artist attempts to borrow the context of the painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights” and uses generative adversarial networks in artificial intelligence to create a digital sci-fi version. In an algorithmic black box, the painting is translated into a digital virtual space in which birds (canaries and other birds), humans (code-covered human beings), and geology (the terrain extracted from Paradise on Earth) are rendered as virtual forms.The canary represents a warning of risk and chaos, the code man represents the subjectivity of code in blockchain and artificial intelligence, and the three different types of geology represent the huge amount of electricity that the blockchain relies on coming from nature, land and mineral deposits, and metaphorically the potential ecological risks. In addition, the Genesis scenario depicted on the outside of the triptych is mentioned to be replaced with the blockchain creation board.
Exhibition and award:
36th Stuttgarter Filmwinter, FITZ Theater animierter Formen, tri-bühne, and the Kunstbezirk, Stuttgart, Germany (2023)
Die Digitale Düsseldorf, Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf, Germany (2022)
Seeing With No Eyes: Video & AI, Microscope Gallery, New York, USA (2022)
Super Fusion – 2021 Chengdu Biennale, Chengdu Museum of Contemporary Art, Chengdu, China (2021)
Shortlist, SAP Art Award, ARTCLOUD China (2021)
Evolution – The Future of the Public, Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum, Langfang, China (2021)
Ars Electronica Festival 2021, Ars Electronica Gardens, Linz, Austria / Online (2021)
Short List, Upapāduka BCA& Kusama Network Global Digital Art Competition (2021)
The Garden of Earthly Delights – Bird, Human and Geology 1&2
Video Part 1: 4K video, color, sound, 00:01:39, projection in black-mirrored space, dimensions variable
Video Part 2: 4K video, color, no sound, video looping, screens, acrylic boxes, 120cmx90cmx30cm
In The Garden of Earthly Delights – Birds, Human and Geology the artist combines two video sections to reflect on the relationship between technology and ecology, and in particular the relationship between computing and electricity in technology. As a background, in the triptych Paradise on Earth, Jeronymus Bosch depicts the Garden of Eden, Earth and Hell in an apocalyptic manner, where the relationship between birds, beasts and humans is in turmoil and danger. In video 1 the artist tries to borrow the pictorial context of the Garden of Earthly Delights and uses generative adversarial networks and 3D computer graphics to create a digital version.
In a black box representing technological algorithms, the painting is translated into a digital virtual space in which birds, humans, and geology are rendered as virtual forms. Based on the relationship between arithmetic and power consumption, the artist transforms the elements to metaphorize the new technology, with the birds representing a warning of risk and chaos, the coding humans representing the subjectivity of code in codes such as artificial intelligence and cryptographic algorithms, and the three different types of geology representing the huge amounts of power from nature, land, and deposits that AI and blockchain are based on, and their potential ecological risks.
In Video 2, the artist loops through the terminal interfaces of the three algorithms, a map of global electricity consumption, and a view of the Earth’s plates, with the black box off-screen echoing the black box in video 1.