Dreamscape
In reaction to AI-generated art based on BIG DATA, the Metacreation Lab developed Autolume, a no-coding environment that allows artists to train AI models based on their own selection of works, be it they theirs or otherwise. The tools allow non-experts to manipulate such models and generate both still and animated outputs.
In this first iteration, we worked with Vancouver-based visual artist Erica Lapadat Janzen. By manually searching the latent space abstracting the aesthetics of the work, using Autolume, we hand-picked and treated 12 stills and 9 video loops (we think of as slowly moving paintings) to be presented publicly.
Erica Lapadat-Janzen (Vancouver, Canada) creates media artworks, performances, media art and installations. By emphasizing aesthetics, Lapadat-Janzen seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that only exist to punctuate the human drama in order to clarify our existence and to find poetic meaning in everyday life.
Her media artworks are on the one hand touchingly beautiful, on the other hand painfully attractive. Again and again, the artist leaves us orphaned with a mix of conflicting feelings and thoughts. By manipulating the viewer to create confusion, she often creates several practically identical works, upon which thoughts that have apparently just been developed are manifested: notes are made and then crossed out again, ‘mistakes’ are repeated.
Her works sometimes radiate a cold and latent violence. At times, disconcerting beauty emerges. The inherent visual seductiveness, along with the conciseness of the exhibitions, further complicates the reception of their manifold layers of meaning. By applying abstraction, she creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.
Her works doesn’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. Erica Lapadat-Janzen currently lives and works in The Internet.