The video works look at many possible futures through AI and other mediums to work toward technological ecosystems based on machinic abstractions and hybridization. Whitcraft uses AI to propose ‘technologically native’ abstractions in video, exploring what AI’s ‘natural mode’ of creativity can be with minimal human intervention.
The audio for these works was created by Aaron Lepley, a composer, performer, and educator who currently lives in Austin, TX. His music ranges from works for full orchestra, small ensembles, solo pieces, electronic music, and various hybrids thereof. He received the Master of Music in Composition from the University of South Florida. He creates original compositions for advertisements, film, and multimedia art installations.
These video works are a love letter to the natural world, an invitation to come closer to the surrounding that we are deeply intertwined with.
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Logos Liguri: A Metaphysical Debate, 2023. Single channel 4k video. Italian with English Subtitles. Running time 20 minutes.
Logos Liguri: A Metaphysical Debate, is a film which traces the developing landscape of the Ligurian region of North-Western Italy, as a living being, autonomous from human conceptions. The film uses a depth of time-scale to overcome the digital time-scale of contemporary life, to enter a world of thoughtfulness and meditation on the changing human-world-planet relationship. Logos Liguri compiles philosophy, science, and the occult with footage using extra-human vision systems to interrogate the concept of planetary intelligence and the anthropocene. Created by Davey Whitcraft and Francesco Cassissa, Italian with English Subtitles. 4k video, running time 20 minutes. Score by Aaron Lepley.
The Altogether Now, 2022. 42 x 74 Inches. Single channel 4k video with stereo audio, 4 Minutes running time.
The Altogether Now explores a new mode of working with landscape and proposes a world that operates with different physics, impossible geometries and alternate geo- planetary arrangements. Working with parameters collaboratively created by Whitcraft and a General Adversarial Network (GAN), the results transfigure current physical principles resulting in re-arranged horizons and mesmerizing seascapes.
The work was shot with modified drone and traditional cinema cameras which have been altered to be sensitive to Infrared, Ultraviolet and visible light spectrums. This work destabilizes anthropocentric visual traditions and, with the help of technology, proposes alternative architectures via landscape, hybridizing the natural and man-made worlds. 42 x 74 Inches. Single channel 4k video with stereo audio, 4 Minutes running time. The soundtrack for Altogether Now was actualized by creating variations of the pitches (order and register) and rhythms (duration and order) of a prescribed motif. Soundtrack composed by Aaron Lepley.
Metaphysical Supplements I, 2022. 42 x 74 Inches. Single channel 4k video with 5 Channel audio, 3 Minutes running time.
This video piece is composed of 100,000 frames of material which came from the latent space of an AI Neural Network trained on Earth based landscapes. This work questions a single cultural conception of landscape by allowing a machine to ‘daydream’ about landscapes. Since machines have alternative aesthetic conditioning and preferences, the results question our own more rigid anthropocentric visual conditioning. 42 x 74 Inches. Single channel 4k video with 5 Channel audio, 3 Minutes running time. Samsung Art Frame display. All tonal material for Metaphysical Supplements is based on the pitch collection- Ab, Bb, C, D, Eb, F, & G and were "performed" randomly in varying order and rhythm by MAX MSP (interactive visual programming language for music and multimedia) thus creating the main melody. Soundtrack composed by Aaron Lepley.
Love Right Now, 2022. Custom hardware, software and LED lighting. Running time 39 Minutes.
This light and sound installation utilizing LED light sculptures, custom software/hardware and custom loudspeakers which work together to capture ambient frequencies from wi-fi signals, creates an immersive, meditative light and sound experience based on localized internet traffic. This work interrogates the idea of the visible and invisible, and turns the idea of productivity/labor/technology on its head by repurposing raw web data as a basis for an alternative natural experience - a communing with a different type of natural environment - a ‘natural’ environment of radio frequencies that exist as a by-product of the massive scale of cognitive labor transmitted over the wifi airwaves all over the planet. Collaboration with Aaron Lepley.