Reverse Tar Pit - Gallery 3

Artwork Description:

In World Upstream, an emergent, more-than-human community is in a perpetual process of reclaiming a decaying hydroelectric dam and transforming it into a site for leisure. The simulated protagonists—a sentient poplar tree, a group of quadruplets, an AI-powered Dyson vacuum, among others—co-exist at a never-ending picnic upstream of the dam, tending to their individual and collective needs by engaging in mundane, social, anti-productive, small behaviors as a way of rewilding the surroundings of a soon-to-be-obsolete piece of infrastructure.

The dam is a quiet but consistent presence in the scene. As a past-its-prime technological marvel that was once at the forefront of cultural discourse during the 20th-century nation-building era, it acts as a metaphorical device for speculating on the future of technologies currently at their hype peak. At the same time, it invites reflection on our affective response to technologically altered landscapes. What becomes of our definitions of “nature” when a concrete monolith is placed at its center, or when a myriad artificially intelligent beings become integral to its processes?

This project chooses to take for granted a future where AI entities exist in the world in embodied ways. Their umwelt however, is mediated by the landscape rather than the server farm, and rooted in the complex truths, dangers and histories the landscape holds. In doing so, World Upstream aims to imagine a genre painting for the late 21st century, a small, interdependent fiction where different types of intelligence share a less hierarchical, more porous world.

Artwork Description:

Technological progress creates waste, and the vast majority of artifacts become debris within the span of a human lifetime. Obsolete and discarded technology become objects of curiosity found in thrift stores, flea markets and junk shops. On the timescale of a spacefaring civilization imagine the junk we'll find in orbit and free floating in space. Imagine finding a field of debris that didn't even come from the work of humans.

Artwork Description:

Technological progress creates waste, and the vast majority of artifacts become debris within the span of a human lifetime. Obsolete and discarded technology become objects of curiosity found in thrift stores, flea markets and junk shops. On the timescale of a spacefaring civilization imagine the junk we'll find in orbit and free floating in space. Imagine finding a field of debris that didn't even come from the work of humans.

Artwork Description:

Technological progress creates waste, and the vast majority of artifacts become debris within the span of a human lifetime. Obsolete and discarded technology become objects of curiosity found in thrift stores, flea markets and junk shops. On the timescale of a spacefaring civilization imagine the junk we'll find in orbit and free floating in space. Imagine finding a field of debris that didn't even come from the work of humans.

Artwork Description:

Technological progress creates waste, and the vast majority of artifacts become debris within the span of a human lifetime. Obsolete and discarded technology become objects of curiosity found in thrift stores, flea markets and junk shops. On the timescale of a spacefaring civilization imagine the junk we'll find in orbit and free floating in space. Imagine finding a field of debris that didn't even come from the work of humans.

Artwork Description:

Every tar pit needs a Saber Toothed Tiger. Or a house cat that thinks it's a Saber Toothed Tiger, keeping an eye on the place and making sure there's no funny business. Yam's got her eye on you! 

Transcription of Audio:

In exact mud,

a flopper.

Also a crusted tusk

a flopper flipped

into the mud.

Also a flopper farm,

which births some floppers

by the dozen.

Bakes twelve floppers fresh,

then another twelve,

then a full twelve more.

When a flopper flips a crusted tusk,

eleven flopper twins are ecstatic.

They tumble,

sideways,

into a ravine.

Now, call them tumblers.

In a taught ravine,

a tumbler.

Also, a mourning saddle.

Where is its horse?

Try to saddle a tumbler:

no good

The saddle tumbles.

Try a crusted flopper:

disgusting.

The flopper crust crumbles.

It takes twelve tumblers to conceive a new one

and sometimes it is a softskin.

A softskin can't tumble.

Matter-of-factly,

a mourning saddle is good for a sad horse.

That's the only thing.

The only thing

is that a saddle at times is needed for your horse.

So you've got to make do

with what you've got.

You can look for a flopper

in the grass.

No good.

You can be the flopper in the grass you are looking for.

You will need a crusted tusk.

You will need

exact mud.

With these two things,

you can look for a tumbler in a taught ravine.

You can find one.

No good.

You'd need a horse to enter that ravine.

You still can't ride a horse with only a mourning saddle.

Woah.

Did I ever lie to you?

Just because you cannot see a tumbler.

You can always be a tumbler.

You can always use a rest.

Softskins don't sleep with floppers here.

It ruins the crust.

Here:

have a nap in this tub.

I won't watch much.

I'll drop in some tidbits for you.

Of course, you can't wrestle a flopper.

The flopper will flip you with its crusted tusk.

Into the mud.

A flopper will ride you like a mourning saddle.

You'll wish you could tumble somewhere,

maybe into a deep, dark ravine.

It's no good when a flopper fumbles.

Doesn't know how soft its skin is.

Doesn't know its front from back.

Or which ravine is which.

Its process, inexact.

Its mud, precise.

Sometimes they'll say: you've got a fat flopper on ya.

Or: swat your flopper like a little fly.

They don't understand dynamics.

Or dynamos.

Or dynamism.

It's not, "you're crazy". It's, "they don't understand".

It's not, "they don't understand". It's:

"how would they, never having flopped before?"

It's also:

"These softskins are a bunch of pink-assed, upholstered baboons."

"They're addicted to crying and sadness and other no good things."

"They've had the love tumbled out of them, into a taught ravine."

"When they find the ravine, they cry into it,"

"hoping their love will float to the top."

"But what they don't know is that floppers don't float."

"Floppers don't fool with small, pussy-whooped ravines that you can just cry into"

"and see your love come floating out."

"These are deep. These are dark ravines."

"With tumblers tumbling down all sides."

"Gnawing on love, and fucking their sadnesses like mourning saddles."

"These are terrified, nightmares of horses,"

"unsaddleable, and unconsolable."

"They lap at baboons' tears"

"until their eye-skins are pink and tender as their asses,"

"and their lids so heavy with sleep,"

"they gravitate those crepusculed globes out of their sockets."