Rosemary Lee
https://www.neme.org/projects/emap/rosemary-lee
A Structural Plan for Imitation: Engines of Differentiation
Rosemary Lee’s presentation of her artistic and theoretical work on artificial intelligence in the context of the AI and Art symposium. Her talk centred on the work she has developed during the EMAP residency, A Structural Plan for Imitation: Engines of Differentiation (2024), as well as connecting to her recent book Algorithm, Image, Art (2024) and a second work presented in the AI and Art exhibition, Deconstructing Representation (2019).
A Structural Plan for Imitation: Engines of Differentiation is a video installation that looks at discrepancies between the promises made about AI and the realities of how it materially acts on the world. With the current emphasis on methodologies that, critically or uncritically, rely heavily on the implementation of models, it’s crucial to consider what assumptions, power dynamics, and ideologies are embedded in these practices. The project explores this idea through models’ structuring of relationships between visual perception, real-world phenomena, and the traditional systems of value that have culminated in the present pervasiveness of artificial intelligence.
Rosemary Lee and Alexia Achilleos: A Structural Plan for Imitation: Engines of Differentiation.
Hosted by YouTube on
youtu.be/IWuI-WihgkE.
Interview
Yiannis Colakides. Can you provide a brief outline of your formative ideas generating A Structural Plan for Imitation: Engines of Differentiation?
Rosemary Lee. Over the course of developing the project, Alexia and I discussed a number of different ideas that all come together in how AI is affecting visual culture currently. We started out discussing how Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics feeds into Dan McQuillan’s necroplitics of AI, and how that ends up informing the way that these systems churn through data, labour, energy, and culture. We also looked at the contrast in the way that tech CEOs discuss the technology, in comparison to those working on AI ethics such as Timnit Gebru or theorists such as Matteo Pasquinelli, who has recently addressed the social dimensions of this shift towards pervasive AI.
YC. Can you explain the artwork’s encapsulation of “Engines of Differentiation”? How does this manifest for the viewer’s experience?
RL. The subtitle Engines of Differentiation addresses the logic of division embedded in AI systems. This theme is discussed throughout the textual element of the work, where we look at how machine learning is premised on enacting difference where it is applied. This idea is also explored in the visuals through our examination of training data, which is used to teach machine learning systems to differentiate and reproduce various aspects of input data. The aspect of differentiation extends from the simple technical side of it becoming more difficult to discern generated from non-generated content all the way to more political dimensions such as the power dynamics that AI plays a part in.
YC. Do the texts you reference in the videos act as a point of reference regarding a ‘structure’ or ‘imitation’?
RL. The title of the work comes from an amalgamation of various different ways of defining what a model is. With the rise of AI, we are more and more often encountering the effects of how algorithmic models structure the world based on replicating statistical patterns from the past.
YC. The installation consists of two interdependent elements (1. the structures and 2. the video projections) yet provide their own unique spectator engagement. Is this intentional on your part and if yes, can you explain the motivation for this design.
RL. The installation sets up a relationship so that the video projections are distorted by the apparatuses. This project explores how we can think about AI differently through combining aesthetic experience with conceptual inquiry. 4. Please discuss how your collaboration inspired a focus, considerations, which were additional or enhancements to your own individual practice.
Alexia Achilleos. Despite our differing theoretical frameworks, Rosemary and I are both interested in the historical patterns found within the AI ecosystem, as well technology itself. We both recognise that AI does not exist in a vacuum – instead, it is embedded with power, politics, and culture.
I investigate AI from postcolonial, decolonial, and intersectional feminist perspectives, focusing on semi-peripheral spaces like Cyprus—an ex-colony and hybrid space between East and West. Depending on the context, Cyprus is seen either as part of the birth of Western civilisation or as an oriental Other, a status that shifts according to what is convenient at the time by those in power.
Rosemary asked me to contribute to the collaboration through such perspectives. These included how colonial-era legacies continue to be embedded in AI, neo-colonial processes perpetuated by the AI industry, the necropolitical use of AI by those in power, which follows colonial patterns, but also decolonial approaches that resist colonial AI.
YC. This work implies a level of abstracted thought expressed in part through the physics of light. Did you discuss scale or was the size of the work predetermined by other factors such as budget or practicalities for freight?
RL. The logistical component was emphasised in what we were asked to do, and as it was important for the work to be possible to set up and eventually transported, that informed the development of the work to be fairly modular and streamlined. The idea is for it to deliver an impactful experience with a minimal technical setup. It’s also important from an ecological standpoint to minimise waste, both in the installation components and their transport.
YC. Have you discovered any unforeseen aspects of your artwork when you were constructing it? Please describe.
AA. One challenge we faced was how to visually depict the appropriation of AI for justice and empowerment. Decolonial and feminist approaches emphasise situated, local, and narrow, context-specific perspectives. Since we were not addressing a specific issue in AI, but instead we’re offering a more general critique, that posed a challenge for the video component of the artwork.
RL. It was also very important to respect others’ intellectual property and avoid the perpetuation of problematic data practices that we critique. Our focus was on using found imagery that is in the public domain, and decided to visually portray colonial resistance in AI by using historical photography of anti-colonial resistance and appropriation. That way, especially when juxtaposing historical photography with present day imagery, we hope to draw historical parallels.
YC. With the recent expansion and developments of AI technologies, do you think it is important for more artists to embrace the medium or do you see any issues that artists should be made aware of before they decide?
RL. No, I don’t think it’s necessary or even advisable for artists to embrace AI. What is important is for artists to respond to the context they work within and that increasingly includes a need to be fluent in developments such as AI becoming more pervasive and accessible.
AA. AI is a top-down technology, and it is crucial that artists approach the technology in a critical manner. Newer models demand more computing power and data to train and operate, so it is becoming increasingly difficult for an individual artist to custom-train their own model. We must be aware of the power asymmetries behind such processes; therefore I believe that there needs to be a very good reason for an artist to use a pre-trained model in their work. Despite this, artists have a role in communicating the reality behind the AI hype to the wider community, rather than fuelling the hype.
YC. How and why will this artwork be relevant to the wider media arts community but also, to the wider public?
RL. This project addresses some of the discrepancies we encounter in the increasing presence of AI in visual culture. Beyond the explorations that many artists have been doing on this topic, we’re starting to see generative systems become mainstream, meaning that they affect us on a much larger scale and also in ways that are difficult to understand or remediate. As a result, the ways in which AI affects visual media are more and more relevant to contexts beyond art and technology, specifically. In our collaboration on this topic, Alexia and I tried to problematise what we see as some of the core issues in this area and to discuss how complex an issue it is. Some of the earlier waves of interest in AI relative to media art have either made the mistake of treating it in fairly black and white terms, or as merely a tool, without the nuance of considering its philosophical, historical, and political dimensions. With this project, we tried to demonstrate how many divisive aspects actually come together in AI systems, which is something that is important as we look towards what the future may hold.
Rosemary Lee is an artist and guest assistant professor in the Master’s in Multimedia program at the University of Porto Faculty of Engineering. Her work considers how image production technologies fit within larger narratives about art, knowledge, and relations between humans and machines. She is currently an artist in residence with the European Media Art Platform hosted by NeMe in Limassol, Cyprus. Lee’s recent book Algorithm, Image, Art (New York: Atropos Press, 2024) considers recent developments in artificial intelligence in relation to historical tendencies in image production. That work expands on her practice-led PhD project Machine Learning and Notions of the Image (IT-University of Copenhagen, 2020), looking into how contemporary artists’ approaches to algorithmic media are connected to longer discourse on the mediation of perception.
Installation photographs: Nicos Avraamides
Rosemary Lee and Alexia Achilleos at the Media and Design Lab.
Hosted by YouTube on
youtu.be/vxGgz3_VG1A.
