LAWKI—Now, 2021
Commissioned by Noorderlicht Photo Festival & MU Hybrid Art House
Concept by ARK (Arran Lyon, Louis Braddock Clarke, Roosje Klap, Senka Milutinovic, Teoniki Rozynek, Valentin Vogelmann & Zuzanna Zgierska, in collaboration with Federico Campagna)
LAWKI-Now is part of the trilogy LAWKI (Life As We Know It)
Photos by Peter Tijhuis
GOLDEN CALF 2022 'BEST DIGITAL CULTURAL PRODUCTION'
In LAWKI-Now, a network of unsupervised algorithms curates from a large number of online videos. Through this compositional gesture, a new story of today is broadcasted, in which reality merges with the techno-imaginative. A specialised algorithm scrapes from streams of unlimited data to create its own ontology based on visual stories that circulate, trend, and propagate across the web. In a multi-dimensional ‘random walk’ across this constructed world, global and local events are woven into a common narrative. Pixels stutter, strobe, and sing the landscapes of our new normal.
In the composition of audio-visual material, ARK took inspiration from the method used in Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (1924–29). Created by the German scientist Aby Warburg, this pictorial atlas catalogued images into a neighbouring system—where each visual component referred to its adjacent partners. Such method of classification invites the viewer to associate freely and connect the lines, drawing on their unique experience, knowledge, preferences,
and intuitions.