Research Catalogue

This exposition is documentation of practice elements and research procedures as part of my PhD: Alternative to What? Exploring Alternative Art Schools Through Spatiality, Participation and Performative Tools. The work presented is a form of immersive and deep mapping of the alternative art school and art pedagogies. For an optimal viewing experience, it is recommended to utilise the Chrome web browser.

This is an open-ended project or research process around extremely slow growth, and the contact between glass and biological material. It aims to implement a model of un-synchronisation, perhaps through the form of a modular installation. The “narrative” and linear scale of materials is reworked to transplant them into a spatial setting where individual nodes embody and reinterpret parts of these materials, creating a field of sonic or visual encounters.

"Unlike unrealized architectural projects, which are frequently exhibited and circulated, unrealized artworks tend to remain unnoticed or little known. But perhaps there is another form of artistic agency in the partial expression, the incomplete idea, the projection of a mere intention? Agency of Unrealized Projects (AUP) seeks to document and display these works, in this way charting the terrain of a contingent future." From AUP-eflux Archive In painting, the artist can also be a model for the artwork. In performance art, artist and model come together for the performance. The exposition explores the role of figuration in contemporary art, at the same time posing questions about physical beauty, from the artist's perspective. I set out to examine how to illustrate beauty, while challenging norms and stereotypes of who is perceived as beautiful. I explore the notion of love, in a complementary manner, also in this exposition, as I do in subsequent expositions. Some of the material was selected for my participation, with my artistic pseudonym, Betty Nigianni, in conceptual artist's Janine Antoni workshop, "Loving Care", Performance Matters: Performing Idea, Toynbee Studios, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2010 With essay about Marina Abramovic's work, published at eflux/Art and Education papers, 2012; originally presented as a conference paper at the Yale Centre for British Art, 2010, slides including the artist's writings. Fragments of the research for the installation project, developed in the studio and through my participation in urban research workshops, have been archived at AUP-eflux Archive.

This article discusses four artworks that employ artificial intelligence (AI) as practice as research (PaR) by artist Garrett Lynch IRL. These are: I’m not Garrett Lynch IRL – DoppelGANger Portraits (2021), a series of Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) portraits; TheLastStraw (2021–23), a performative generative artwork for social media; Flag for States of Damage (2018), a performative mixed-reality artwork for the web and The Traveller (2024), a four-channel video installation with artefacts. The objective of the works is two-fold. Firstly, each artwork’s use of AI is distinct yet is intended to form part of a broad ongoing exploration of how networks can be transformative to art practice. The works maintain that AI is a form of network that enables emergence. Not the emergence of intelligence as defined in the field of AI, but instead in the context of art theory a manner in which artworks are expanded, extended or activated beyond their artist/author defined forms. AI as a network is therefore defined as both the generative adversarial network, the input, employed in the formation of the work and the resulting network of artist, artwork and audience that emerges when a work is expanded, extended or activated. Secondly, instrumental in facilitating AI as a network is the use of language as a combined form of encoding and performative utterance (Austin, 2018). Building on a fundamental basis of computing that all digital media is reducible to language, code, and numbers as well as a basis of communication theory that language is a social construct, the works explore language as both form of representation and communication between human and machine. Language enables a process of folding (O’Sullivan, 2005) or flipping (Sloan, 2012) of concepts, media and artefacts between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ spaces, between digital and materialised forms.

Interested in how photographs are constituted, this exposition situates itself in between materialities of photography to discover how photographs are actualized. Using photography as artistic research practice, it uncovers how matters, sounds, bodies, and machines intra-act within the practice of photography. The inquiry challenges the bifurcation between the outside/inside of the frame, rather it emphasizes its fluid nature. It delves into the cosmogenesis of a photograph exploring the multiple folds and transformations in actualizing a photograph revealing the intricate and dynamic assemblages of humans and non-humans from the outside folding with the inside. Thinking with Gilles Deleuze's concept of the Folds, the exposition was able to surface layers upon layers of bodily and material folds that trouble the traditional notion of photographs as images separated from the outside. In the middle of its messiness, the exposition was able to develop an Applique technique as a method of knowing that emerges from this artistic research practice. What came out are layers of images that describe photography as performative movement of matters and bodies, a metamorphosis of infinite images while navigating the rich culture of Vietnam’s Hanoi capital.

AS this is an informal tale, restating my master’s studies. AS I was in the midst of a Uturn, entering formal art education, my hopes and expectations were unclear but deeply felt. AS ever, I feel compelled to question, review, examine some more. AS every question gives an indication to the inner world of the questioner. AS if I want to know if there is a pattern or a path? AS a collector I have documented, framed and reflected with words and stored. As curators act I showcase my creative learning journey.