What role does artificial intelligence have in the art world?
It's a hot debate, but that didn't stop the latest exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia from including it.
Changing From From To From, features work from Seoul- and Berlin-based artist Haegue Yang and includes two major acquisitions - Sonic Intermediates - Three Differential Equations, which is an ensemble of three sculptures, and Non-Linear and Non-Periodic Dynamics, which is an expansive wallpaper specifically adapted to the display at the National Gallery.
However, it's the digital sound file that plays over speakers throughout the gallery space that explores how artificial intelligence can work within modern art.
Titled Genuine Cloning, the sound piece features an AI-created monologue that meanders across several topics, including the "absurd human urge" to name typhoons and cyclones.
"The cloned voice of me, it is artificial, not only artificial but also the voice is incorporating something that is not quite human," Yang said.
"When you carefully listen to what this whispering voice is talking about, it's an observation on mankind. And personally, I think even cynical. This voice is making a joke about what we do and don't do with our environment.
"As one example, the voice is contemplating on how we deal with extreme climates such as cyclones and typhoons. We name them, so the voice, in this case, without the body, talking about how we even divide the naming of the typhoon nation by nation as if there is a border recognised by the typhoon."
The exhibition's title, Changing From From To From, is certainly one of the more unique titles to come out of the National Gallery of Australia. And indeed, to come from the artist.
In fact, Yang said she wasn't convinced when the National Gallery's head curator, international art Russell Storer, first suggested it.
However, it was suggested as it was a line drawn from a poem by Chinese-British conceptual artist Li Yuan-chia - the inspiration for one of the three sculptures that make up Three Differential Equations. The other two sculptures are inspired by fellow pioneering modernist artists Naum Gabo and Barbara Hepworth.
"Not only was I reluctant to make a citation, as my exhibition title, but also, I thought it's very poetic and normally I'm too sane to have a very poetic title," Yang said.
"But ... days passed and this was the best title. And it's very simple and it's poetic and it's actually about changing from A to B, and that idea of movement."
Changing From From To From is on display at the National Gallery until September 24.
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