Demolish Monsters on the Rocks: Prompting Through an Ensemble

bruce gilchrist

About this exposition

As interaction with corporate artificial intelligence increasingly becomes a precondition for contemporary life, artists need to see beyond Generative AI (GenAI) technology as a discrete tool that makes generic products. Instead, they can imagine combinatorial approaches and conceptual frameworks for AI-enabled artworks. Through my practice-based research, the act of prompting multimodal GenAI models has been informed by comprehending an assemblage as a “framework of instruction” held together through poetic alliances, within which the output from one component feeds the process of another. Practical experiments explored an interrelation of body, text, and predictive technology, where an algorithmic prediction of human action conjured “biometric poetry” that was used to stimulate a language model. Working with archival film footage and digital puppets animated with motion-capture files gave rise to the idea of a camera’s field of view – with its bounded contents acting like a key – eliciting value from a language model in a novel form of story making. Potential erroneous inferences were perceived as a new form of chance operation and a characteristic of algorithmic remix as defined by Steve F. Anderson. This method has been further developed in a project that combines performance, waste material, object recognition, and a language model to explore how the manipulation of garbage can be rationalised by a machine to produce poetic texts as a commentary to action portrayed on a screen.

type	research exposition
keywords	AI-enabled art, Intermedia, performance
date	27/09/2024
published	28/01/2026
last modified	28/01/2026
status	published
copyright	author
license	CC BY-NC
language	British English
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3034539/3771198
doi	https://doi.org/10.22501/artact.3034539
published in	ArteActa – Journal for Performing Arts and Artistic Research
portal issue	14. ArteActa 14/2025

name	Figure 2. Schematic of project method, 2024.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 4. Textual output from a language model superimposed on a film clip, 2020.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure3. Screen recording of Python script and HAR analysis
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 1. Stan Brakhage, "Mothlight", 1963, screenshot by Bruce Gilchrist.
copyright	The Estate of Stan Brakhage
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 6. Nye Thompson, CKRBT, 2019. Photograph taken by Bruce Gilchrist of the CKRBT process schematic.
copyright	Thompson, Nye. Courtesy Nye Thompson.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 5. Nye Thompson, CKRBT, 2019. Installation photo, Watermans Gallery, London.
copyright	Thompson, Nye. Courtesy Nye Thompson.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 8. "Eye in the Sky: Real-time Drone Surveillance System (DSS) for Violent Individuals Identification", 2018, screenshot by Bruce Gilchrist.
copyright	Singh, Amarjot
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 7. "Eye in the Sky: Real-Time Drone Surveillance System (DSS) for Violent Individuals Identification Using ScatterNet Hybrid Deep Learning Network"
copyright	Singh, Amarjot, Devendra Patil, and S. N. Omkar.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Video 1. "12. bowling", 2020, 02:02. Development video for "Synset_Gloss".
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	video

name	Figure 11. "HAR Misclassification – abseiling", 2020.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 10. "HAR Misclassification – swimming backstroke", 2020.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 9. "HAR Misclassification – driving tractor", 2020.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 12. "Oeuvre", 2021.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 13. Schematic showing "Synset_Gloss" workflow, 2021.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Video 2. "Synset Gloss", 2020, 07:48. Video and animation with stereo sound.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	video

name	Figure 14. Schematic showing "No_m_oN" workflow, 2021.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Video 3. "No_m_oN", 2020, 04:11. Animation with stereo sound.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	video

name	Figure 16/FOV–3.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 16/FOV–1.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 16/FOV–2.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Video 4. "Idling-in-the-Unreal", extract, 2020, 02:59. Animation with stereo sound.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	video

name	Figure 15. Schematic showing "Idling-in-the-Unreal" workflow, 2021.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 16. Three different FOVs with tabulated textual output, 2021.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Video 6. "Plastic Prāyaścitta", extract, 2023, 01:11.
copyright	Arora, Ashna, Bruce Gilchrist, Chaitali Kulkarni, and Thaniya K. Mahalakshmi.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	video

name	Video 7. "Plastic Prāyaścitta", extract, 2023, 01:57.
copyright	Arora, Ashna, Bruce Gilchrist, Chaitali Kulkarni, and Thaniya K. Mahalakshmi.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	video

name	Figure 18. Poster for "Poetics of Garbage".
copyright	BeFantastic Beyond Commission
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 20. "The Making of Plastic Prāyaścitta", 2023. Photo by Purva Joshi.
copyright	Arora, Ashna, Bruce Gilchrist, Chaitali Kulkarni, and Thaniya K. Mahalakshmi.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Video 8. "Plastic Prāyaścitta", extract, 2023, 01:22.
copyright	Arora, Ashna, Bruce Gilchrist, Chaitali Kulkarni, and Thaniya K. Mahalakshmi.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	video

name	Figure 23. "Poetics of Garbage" installation at Bangalore International Centre as part of FutureFantastic festival, 2023.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 22. "Poetics of Garbage" installation at Bangalore International Centre as part of FutureFantastic festival, March 2023.
copyright	Arora, Ashna, Bruce Gilchrist, Chaitali Kulkarni, and Thaniya K. Mahalakshmi.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 21. "Poetics of Garbage" installation at Bangalore International Centre, 2023.
copyright	Arora, Ashna, Bruce Gilchrist, Chaitali Kulkarni, and Thaniya K. Mahalakshmi.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 24. "Poetics of Garbage" installation at Bangalore International Centre as part of FutureFantastic festival, 2023.
copyright	Arora, Ashna, Bruce Gilchrist, Chaitali Kulkarni, and Thaniya K. Mahalakshmi.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Figure 19. Schematic showing "Poetics of Garbage" workflow, 2024.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Background
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	background

name	Title
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

name	Video 5. "Idling-in-the-Unreal", extract, 2020, 06:05. Animation with stereo sound.
copyright	Bruce Gilchrist
license	CC BY-NC
usages	video

name	Figure 17. "Plastic Prāyaścitta", 2023, film production photo by Rahul Naag.
copyright	Arora, Ashna, Bruce Gilchrist, Chaitali Kulkarni, and Thaniya K. Mahalakshmi.
license	CC BY-NC
usages	picture

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Demolish Monsters on the Rocks: Prompting Through an Ensemble (2026)

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