WEBVTT 00:05.797 --> 00:08.800 When you're making art, you're making ways of seeing. 00:08.800 --> 00:12.721 And to me, the exciting project there 00:12.721 --> 00:14.347 is trying to understand 00:14.347 --> 00:17.350 what your world looks like now. 00:18.518 --> 00:20.020 Today, to be an artist 00:20.020 --> 00:21.563 is not just to make images, 00:21.563 --> 00:23.356 but to ask how those images 00:23.356 --> 00:25.900 are used to classify and shape 00:25.900 --> 00:27.402 the world around us. 00:27.402 --> 00:29.279 Some of the artists that we work with 00:29.279 --> 00:31.448 push their practices in this direction, 00:31.448 --> 00:35.118 and by doing so, they ask important questions 00:35.118 --> 00:36.536 about the world we live in. 00:36.536 --> 00:39.456 If the images we produce 00:39.456 --> 00:41.291 and that we see are no longer 00:41.291 --> 00:43.126 just something we look at, 00:43.126 --> 00:45.545 but something that looks back at us. 00:45.545 --> 00:47.756 What is the artist job now? 00:47.756 --> 00:49.174 For Trevor Paglen, 00:49.174 --> 00:51.760 it is to enter those systems, understand 00:51.760 --> 00:53.845 the visions of the world they produce, 00:53.845 --> 00:55.513 and make work that helps us 00:55.513 --> 00:57.932 see the present more clearly. 00:57.932 --> 01:01.644 My job is to learn how to see the world, 01:01.644 --> 01:04.731 create images of those forms of seeing 01:04.731 --> 01:06.232 and share those with other people. 01:07.650 --> 01:09.652 The world around us is always changing. 01:09.652 --> 01:11.613 You have to be looking around that, 01:11.613 --> 01:13.782 poking around these kinds of systems, 01:13.782 --> 01:15.408 understanding what they're doing. 01:15.408 --> 01:17.952 Understanding what visions of the world 01:17.952 --> 01:20.413 they're creating and using those 01:20.413 --> 01:23.666 to really try to make sense of your environment. 01:23.666 --> 01:26.461 The art that I'm excited about is art 01:26.461 --> 01:28.797 that is engaging with the present, 01:28.797 --> 01:31.466 is engaging with the world 01:31.466 --> 01:33.259 that we actually live in. 01:43.144 --> 01:45.522 For Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, 01:45.522 --> 01:49.025 The artist today has to work inside the systems 01:49.025 --> 01:51.444 that organize contemporary life. 01:51.444 --> 01:54.405 Software, machine learning, networks 01:54.405 --> 01:58.076 and protocols are not side topics of culture anymore. 01:58.076 --> 02:00.286 They are the culture. 02:00.286 --> 02:01.746 I think a lot of people see people 02:01.746 --> 02:03.915 using technology in their art, 02:03.915 --> 02:05.834 and they think that they're like jumping on a trend 02:05.834 --> 02:08.336 or just trying to demo something. 02:08.336 --> 02:10.421 And it's really just about trying to understand 02:10.421 --> 02:12.090 the contemporary tools of our day. 02:12.090 --> 02:13.758 For us, it's about understanding 02:13.758 --> 02:15.385 what it means to live in the now. 02:15.385 --> 02:17.637 It's not some sort of “future - futurism”. 02:17.637 --> 02:19.305 It's a “now-ism”, you know? 02:19.305 --> 02:21.224 So we're just trying to make sense of things. 02:21.224 --> 02:22.725 It's kind of undeniable. 02:22.725 --> 02:24.352 If you look over the last 20 years, 02:24.352 --> 02:25.645 that software systems 02:25.645 --> 02:27.856 and the logics and incentives of them 02:27.856 --> 02:31.067 have kind of had the most impact on culture 02:31.067 --> 02:32.861 and society writ large. 02:32.861 --> 02:35.155 And so it would be really peculiar as an artist 02:35.155 --> 02:36.990 or someone who experiments with things 02:36.990 --> 02:38.616 to not want to dive into that, 02:38.616 --> 02:40.577 you know, that that just seems strange. 02:40.577 --> 02:42.036 If anything, I have the opposite problem 02:42.036 --> 02:43.371 where I kind of look at people 02:43.371 --> 02:45.707 who don't want to engage with that. 02:45.707 --> 02:47.041 And I'm like, how do you live 02:47.041 --> 02:48.084 in the world that we live in 02:48.084 --> 02:50.378 and not be curious 02:50.378 --> 02:51.796 about how these systems work? 02:51.796 --> 02:53.381 We don't know where all this is going, 02:53.381 --> 02:54.257 and this might also 02:54.257 --> 02:55.842 just be like a really special moment 02:55.842 --> 02:58.511 where we do all have access to similar tools. 02:58.511 --> 03:01.181 I don't know if that will be the case in the near future. 03:11.983 --> 03:15.778 In a world of endless distraction, quantified culture 03:15.820 --> 03:19.490 and screens designed to pull us in every direction. 03:19.490 --> 03:22.994 Artists now see art as one of the last spaces 03:22.994 --> 03:27.081 for concentration, perception and singular focus. 03:27.081 --> 03:29.000 If the internet has become 03:29.000 --> 03:29.375 a sort of bad habit, 03:29.375 --> 03:30.668 a sort of bad habit, 03:30.668 --> 03:33.630 what can digital art still offer us? 03:33.630 --> 03:35.381 For Rafaël Rozendaal, 03:35.381 --> 03:37.926 the artists task today is to understand 03:37.926 --> 03:39.636 attention, perception 03:39.636 --> 03:42.222 and the logic of digital systems 03:42.222 --> 03:43.932 and then make work 03:43.932 --> 03:46.059 that slows us down, 03:46.059 --> 03:47.977 sharpens our awareness 03:47.977 --> 03:49.145 and ultimately gives 03:49.145 --> 03:49.938 and ultimately gives 03:49.938 --> 03:51.940 focus back to the viewer. 03:51.940 --> 03:53.274 When I started, the internet 03:53.274 --> 03:55.985 felt like a free, open space, 03:55.985 --> 03:56.903 and at this point 03:56.903 --> 03:58.363 the internet feels like a bad habit. 03:58.363 --> 03:59.781 If we are digital artists 03:59.781 --> 04:01.282 and we're working on a machine 04:01.282 --> 04:03.076 that is meant to pull you 04:03.076 --> 04:03.993 all over the place 04:03.993 --> 04:05.870 and not to be in one place, 04:05.870 --> 04:08.164 I think it's also our role 04:08.164 --> 04:10.208 to be the connoisseur of the medium, 04:10.208 --> 04:12.377 or to know how colors work, 04:12.377 --> 04:13.878 how a composition works, 04:13.878 --> 04:16.172 how information flow works, 04:16.172 --> 04:17.590 and how attention works. 04:17.590 --> 04:19.509 And to really be aware of that, 04:19.509 --> 04:20.718 maybe even expressing 04:20.718 --> 04:22.011 that in different media. 04:22.011 --> 04:22.762 When I talk about 04:22.762 --> 04:25.223 the intensification of perception, 04:25.223 --> 04:27.433 I talk about a heightened awareness, 04:27.433 --> 04:29.143 it's something about zooming 04:29.143 --> 04:30.270 in further than anyone else 04:30.270 --> 04:32.981 because everyone else is attributing 04:32.981 --> 04:35.024 function to everything they see. 04:35.024 --> 04:37.026 I think artists more than ever 04:37.026 --> 04:37.944 have a role to talk about 04:37.944 --> 04:39.529 have a role to talk about 04:39.529 --> 04:40.822 where our eyes are, 04:40.822 --> 04:42.949 what the screen is doing to our eyes, 04:42.949 --> 04:45.034 and how we feel when we see things 04:45.034 --> 04:48.413 not in a spoken way, not writing it down, but 04:48.413 --> 04:49.956 feeling it when you're in front of the work. 04:50.915 --> 04:53.793 Art is just good at this singular focus, 04:53.793 --> 04:56.004 and I think it's better at that than anything else. 05:06.222 --> 05:07.640 Other digital artists 05:07.640 --> 05:08.975 bring different urgency 05:08.975 --> 05:10.685 to the conversation. 05:10.685 --> 05:13.062 The need to hold on to embodiment 05:13.062 --> 05:15.064 in a culture flooded with data 05:15.064 --> 05:18.109 and automated systems feels urgent. 05:18.109 --> 05:20.528 In that sense, the artist's job 05:20.528 --> 05:22.989 is not only to work with new tools, 05:22.989 --> 05:27.160 but to ask what remains human within them 05:27.160 --> 05:30.621 gestures, emotion, labor, and meaning; 05:30.621 --> 05:32.582 especially meaning. 05:32.582 --> 05:35.501 In a time when so much of life is measured, 05:35.501 --> 05:37.754 predicted, systematized, 05:37.754 --> 05:39.756 what can artists still protect 05:39.756 --> 05:42.258 and reveal of the whole structure? 05:42.258 --> 05:43.634 For Sougwen Chung, 05:43.634 --> 05:46.763 the answer lies in the truth of the gesture. 05:46.763 --> 05:48.639 In embodied practices 05:48.639 --> 05:51.559 where the artist makes us rethink labor, 05:51.559 --> 05:54.395 feeling, and the future of work inside 05:54.395 --> 05:55.730 of these new systems. 05:57.899 --> 05:59.984 I find working with these 05:59.984 --> 06:01.819 tools and building my own 06:01.819 --> 06:03.780 to be so vital to my practice, 06:03.780 --> 06:04.530 because they are tools and systems 06:04.530 --> 06:07.325 because they are tools and systems 06:07.325 --> 06:09.994 that are mechanisms of control 06:09.994 --> 06:12.455 and mechanisms of producing entertainment. 06:12.455 --> 06:13.581 I think they’re mechanisms 06:13.581 --> 06:16.584 of measurement at its core, 06:16.584 --> 06:17.543 and we're flooded today 06:17.543 --> 06:18.795 and we're flooded today 06:18.795 --> 06:21.297 with all types of measurement. 06:21.297 --> 06:22.715 The only way I understand 06:22.715 --> 06:23.591 what to do with all this 06:23.591 --> 06:25.385 data is to understand that 06:25.385 --> 06:27.428 while there is meaning in the data, 06:27.428 --> 06:28.596 the meaning is the meaning 06:28.596 --> 06:29.847 that we make through 06:29.847 --> 06:31.808 working with it as practitioners. 06:33.643 --> 06:37.480 The state of image making today, is frenetic. 06:44.529 --> 06:47.198 The truth for me is in the truth of the gesture, 06:47.198 --> 06:49.867 an emotional, embodied reality 06:49.867 --> 06:52.495 that is a grounding mechanism, something 06:52.495 --> 06:54.789 I think we need more collectively 06:54.789 --> 06:57.041 to discuss and make space for. 06:57.041 --> 06:58.334 Artists understand 06:58.334 --> 07:00.461 the dignity of work and labor. 07:00.461 --> 07:02.422 Artists are really at the forefront 07:02.422 --> 07:07.260 of how we're thinking about labor in 2026. 07:15.309 --> 07:17.645 Some of today's artists find themselves 07:17.645 --> 07:19.897 inside the engine of the present. 07:19.897 --> 07:23.276 Simulations, networks, real time systems, 07:23.276 --> 07:24.819 and the technical structures 07:24.819 --> 07:26.863 that organize experience. 07:26.863 --> 07:29.198 Their work suggests that today 07:29.198 --> 07:31.784 the artist is not only making objects, 07:31.784 --> 07:33.786 the building models of the world 07:33.786 --> 07:36.247 and exposing the powers behind them. 07:36.247 --> 07:37.748 For John Gerrard, 07:37.748 --> 07:40.042 the artist's role is to work inside 07:40.042 --> 07:43.171 those systems and test how digital art 07:43.171 --> 07:45.465 can become a space of agency, 07:45.465 --> 07:49.010 reflection and world-making. 07:49.010 --> 07:52.513 You respond to contemporary conditions 07:52.513 --> 07:56.642 using the most powerful tools you have. 07:56.642 --> 07:58.102 And those tools are often 07:58.102 --> 07:59.479 the most contemporary 07:59.479 --> 08:01.022 and the most contemporary tool 08:01.022 --> 08:04.484 we have right now is computing power. 08:04.484 --> 08:06.944 And if the world is changing, 08:06.944 --> 08:08.613 we must pay attention 08:08.613 --> 08:10.573 to what's changing it. 08:10.573 --> 08:14.285 And we have to try and honestly 08:14.285 --> 08:17.163 kind of take ownership of these things 08:17.163 --> 08:20.082 less in the service of kind of dominance 08:20.082 --> 08:21.667 and more in the service, 08:21.667 --> 08:23.127 honestly I would say of poetry. 08:23.127 --> 08:24.504 I think we're just getting started, 08:24.504 --> 08:27.256 and I think it's the most exciting time, 08:27.256 --> 08:29.050 and most extraordinary and interesting. 08:29.050 --> 08:31.302 It's also like the most troubled time. 08:37.767 --> 08:41.229 What has happened in the past 30 to 50 years 08:41.229 --> 08:44.649 that has changed our understanding of image making? 08:44.649 --> 08:46.484 What is our understanding 08:46.484 --> 08:49.946 today of the tools we use to make art, 08:49.946 --> 08:54.700 and the tools that govern our visual culture at large? 08:54.700 --> 08:58.621 In my lifetime, there's been three real revolutions, 08:58.621 --> 09:00.706 at least in our relationship to images. 09:00.706 --> 09:04.335 First would be the advent of digital images. 09:04.335 --> 09:06.337 The second would be the kind of 09:06.337 --> 09:09.340 maturation of computer vision technologies. 09:09.340 --> 09:13.302 And the third would be the generative turn in AI. 09:13.302 --> 09:16.681 The ability to generate synthetic images. 09:16.681 --> 09:18.849 And in the 90s, people thought about that 09:18.849 --> 09:20.518 revolution as being important 09:20.518 --> 09:22.395 because there was no original. 09:22.395 --> 09:24.939 And what I think was interesting about that revolution 09:24.939 --> 09:27.733 is that images went from being 09:27.733 --> 09:29.318 natively human readable 09:29.318 --> 09:31.153 to natively machine readable. 09:31.153 --> 09:35.616 An image went from being a print, or a negative 09:35.616 --> 09:37.451 or something that you could look at 09:37.451 --> 09:38.953 to a bunch of numbers 09:38.953 --> 09:40.580 that you needed an interpreter 09:40.580 --> 09:41.914 to turn into an image. 09:41.914 --> 09:43.958 A JPEG doesn't look like anything, 09:43.958 --> 09:45.334 like you need a JPEG viewer 09:45.334 --> 09:47.086 to see what that JPEG looks like. 09:47.086 --> 09:48.129 The second revolution 09:48.129 --> 09:50.756 was the maturation of computer vision systems 09:50.756 --> 09:54.969 in the kind of late 2000 early 2010s. 09:54.969 --> 09:59.056 And this made it so that images became 09:59.056 --> 10:01.976 interpretable by computers. 10:01.976 --> 10:03.352 It created a situation where 10:03.352 --> 10:04.687 most of the images in the world 10:04.687 --> 10:05.980 were made by machines, 10:05.980 --> 10:07.773 for other machines, 10:07.773 --> 10:10.234 and humans were rarely in those loops. 10:10.234 --> 10:15.281 The third revolution is the advent of generative AI. 10:15.281 --> 10:18.367 The ability to have a prompt, 10:18.367 --> 10:20.870 have an image come out, have a video come out. 10:20.870 --> 10:23.956 There's a kind of epistemic break 10:23.956 --> 10:26.375 that it signifies, for lack of a better word. 10:26.375 --> 10:27.543 What I mean by that 10:27.543 --> 10:29.253 is that a lot of the assumptions 10:29.253 --> 10:30.463 that we had about 10:30.463 --> 10:33.049 what an image was, changes. 10:33.049 --> 10:35.384 Somebody had to make it, that's gone. 10:35.384 --> 10:37.303 So I don't totally know yet 10:37.303 --> 10:40.306 what it means to live in a world where 10:40.306 --> 10:42.183 art doesn't have an artist 10:42.183 --> 10:43.309 behind it, necessarily. 10:44.018 --> 10:45.936 What does it mean to make art today? 10:45.936 --> 10:47.438 When art is no longer 10:47.438 --> 10:50.149 only just an object on a wall? 10:50.149 --> 10:52.902 In the 21st century, image making is shaped 10:52.902 --> 10:55.988 by systems, protocols and technologies 10:55.988 --> 10:57.031 that influence not only what we create, 10:57.031 --> 10:58.240 that influence not only what we create, 10:58.240 --> 10:59.659 but how we create, 10:59.659 --> 11:00.910 why we create, 11:00.910 --> 11:02.411 and the kinds of intentions 11:02.411 --> 11:04.538 we embed in those works. 11:04.538 --> 11:06.332 So, what should artists 11:06.332 --> 11:08.376 be paying attention to now? 11:08.376 --> 11:09.835 The tools themselves, 11:09.835 --> 11:11.212 the ethics behind them, 11:11.212 --> 11:13.297 the structures they belong to, 11:13.297 --> 11:16.175 or the ways they shape perception, agency 11:16.175 --> 11:18.219 or the world around us? 11:18.219 --> 11:20.096 I'd say all of the above. 11:20.096 --> 11:22.181 And all these artists we are working 11:22.181 --> 11:24.642 with are great examples of artists 11:24.642 --> 11:26.143 thinking about these questions, 11:26.143 --> 11:29.313 and these ideas in a very profound manner. 11:29.313 --> 11:34.276 I think of art as a verb state. 11:34.276 --> 11:37.405 Art is something that you do. 11:37.405 --> 11:40.324 It's a way of engaging 11:40.324 --> 11:45.246 with one's inner landscape and how that's 11:45.246 --> 11:46.956 affected by the world around us. 11:46.956 --> 11:52.128 When I think about the nature of image making today, 11:52.128 --> 11:55.005 I think these questions of artistic intention, 11:55.005 --> 11:57.174 these questions on how things are built, 11:57.174 --> 11:59.260 these questions on process 11:59.260 --> 12:02.805 unfold a much broader spectrum 12:02.805 --> 12:05.891 or an ecology of ethics, of protocols, 12:05.891 --> 12:11.564 of thresholds and of operations that really become 12:11.564 --> 12:13.482 an artistic practice in and of itself. 12:13.482 --> 12:17.653 Computing is of this time, but it's 12:17.653 --> 12:22.366 it's just a contemporary reflection of conditions 12:22.366 --> 12:25.369 in the same way as pigment is, paper is, 12:25.369 --> 12:27.163 ocher is, a hand print is. 12:27.163 --> 12:29.457 You can't only do pencil drawings, 12:29.457 --> 12:32.460 and you can't only show pencil drawings. 12:32.501 --> 12:34.003 And that's maybe where contemporary arts 12:34.003 --> 12:35.546 backed itself, into a corner 12:35.546 --> 12:36.881 in the last couple of years. 12:36.881 --> 12:38.924 A lot of being an artist to me 12:38.924 --> 12:40.843 and the work is also a balance 12:40.843 --> 12:42.428 of what life you want to live, 12:42.428 --> 12:43.345 what do you want to do 12:43.345 --> 12:44.972 and what are you fascinated with? 12:44.972 --> 12:46.056 I use the internet more 12:46.056 --> 12:47.767 as a space than as a subject. 12:47.767 --> 12:48.934 So my work is not so much 12:48.934 --> 12:51.103 about technology, it's using technology. 12:51.103 --> 12:52.480 When you're making art, 12:52.480 --> 12:54.440 you're making ways of seeing. 12:54.440 --> 12:57.777 And to me, the exciting project 12:57.777 --> 12:59.987 there is trying to understand 12:59.987 --> 13:02.656 what your world looks like now. 13:02.656 --> 13:05.409 The pertinence of technology is 13:05.409 --> 13:08.871 explosively expanding, so 13:08.871 --> 13:10.206 somebody's gonna have to pay attention. 13:10.206 --> 13:13.209 The phone is extraordinarily 13:13.209 --> 13:17.213 aware of your behaviors and your desires 13:17.213 --> 13:19.715 and constructs worlds around that. 13:19.715 --> 13:21.634 And those worlds are enormously compelling. 13:21.634 --> 13:26.889 Culturally, it's the most important space 13:26.889 --> 13:28.015 there is right now. 13:28.015 --> 13:29.183 It's hard to imagine a practice 13:29.183 --> 13:31.393 that doesn’t involve diving deep into software, 13:31.393 --> 13:33.187 or the orchestration of systems 13:33.187 --> 13:35.523 for us, there's kind of no choice at this point.