Produced in Vancouver in 2024, OBUM by Kate Armstrong and Michael Tippett is a cross-disciplinary project that explores the ambiguous post-photographic space of AI-driven production and image-making. By extrapolating from visual concepts drawn from the latent space of an AI system, the project makes tangible the aesthetic and ultimately political implications of machine learning systems that build from flawed conceptions of how the female body exists in relation to technology.
OBUM extends its critical exploration through various media, consisting of still images and a video piece that reference disparate cultural arenas such as brand logos, art historical references to classical nudes, elements of luxury fashion, and motifs from gaming and warfare. This fusion challenges viewers to reconsider the boundaries and intersections of these domains.
At the heart of this series, PORTRAITS, is provocative imagery featuring solitary, subtly sexualized white female figures sprawled upon and occasionally merging with distorted and nonsensical military vehicles. Ranging from tanks to angular, armored stealth machines, the vehicles appear marooned in stark, inhospitable tundra landscapes. The setting invites us to reflect on eerie connections surfaced by AI pattern detection that reveal how the human database centers the female form when envisioning a blend of beauty and dystopia.
