EQUINOX
Future exhibition
Overview
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The media artist Dennis Del Favero - Scientia Professor of Digital Innovation at the iCinema Research Centre, UNSW Sydney -is showing two new AI based computer graphic works: Black Milk, Eyebright and Interregnum offer a glimpse into the violent worlds of wildfires that now typify our times. Along with 14 other awards, Del Favero was named a 2021 Laureate Fellow, sharing a total of AU$ 44.2 million in funding for the Laureate Fellowships. He was the first artist ever to receive this award, previously reserved for scientists, for transforming scientific data into aesthetic works through the use of cutting-edge AI technology. The computer graphic works Black Milk, Eyebright and Interregnum reveal how fire is no longer passive backdrops to human history but titanic protagonists, exponentially intensifying their impact through global warming. Viewed since the beginnings of recorded history as human enablers, they have now behaved in increasingly violent ways as seen in the mega wildfires ravaging the planet. It is as if the natural backdrop against which our history has played out has become unstable.
The cinematic artworks Black Milk, Eyebright and Interregnum are adapted from Georg Buchner’s Lenz of 1836, which prophetically foreshadowed the dramatic changes in Nature we are witnessing today. Black Milk from 2026, is a 3D steroscopic artificially intelligent computer graphic installation. It allows the viewer to navigate a software generated wildfire, using real-time motion tracking of the viewer’s gaze and movement. Spontaneous wildfires are an entirely new paradigm of fire, unprecedented because of their unpredictable behaviour, monumental scale, extraordinary speed and ability to create their own weather system. Based on real world wildfire data and a geolocated landscape. The three works form a very small part of a much larger five- year project titled Burning Landscapes funded by the Australian Research Council in 2021. For Burning Landscapes Del Favero is leading a team of AI, computer and fire scientists, from leading international universities, to use artificially intelligent visualisation technology to interactively depict the new world of extreme wildfires. Based on an extensive dataset of actual fires in geographically dispersed areas around the world, the viewer is transported into cinematic wildfire scenarios that virtually transform him or her into blazing fire. This is opposed to the two-dimensional numerical graphs typically used by climate scientists which are unpersuasive due to their abstract nature. By visualizing this danger, Del Favero has made a convincing contribution not only aesthetically, but also scientifically. |
