LAWKI

In the artwork series Life As We Know It (LAWKI), a network of unsupervised algorithms curates from a number of online videos. Through this compositional gesture a story of today is broadcasted, in which reality merges with the techno-imaginative.

The libretto of this algorithmic continuum consists of hundreds of phrases, typed by an imaginary user into the search engines of video hosting platforms. Vaccine factories, dead sea scrolls, zoom raves, clean rooms, sea snot spreads, octopus dreams, 5G everest, canal blockages, and ambergris whale fortunes reveal the quirks, dreads, and startles of the contemporary life. A designed algorithm scrapes from the stream of boundless data to create its own ontology. In a so-called random walk across this constructed world, global and local events are woven into a common narrative. Pixels stutter, strobe, and sing the landscapes of our new normal.

However immersive, overwhelming, or confronting, Life As We Know It does not offer a comprehensive image of reality. Rather, it exemplifies biases inherent to technologies and databases. By the means of deconstruction, the project reflects on knowledge production in a contemporary, highly mediated world.The spatial installation invites the audience to move between the screens, and recalibrate the notions of how media environments are organised. In this walk of wonder, the viewer is not merely a consumer of the cacophonic spectacle, but an active co-creator of both process and outcome.

The end of the world is postponed until further notice.