2023 generative audiovisual installation

The first iteration of FAKE HISTORY opened at Lei Gallery in Taichung on 15 April…it was really a lot of fun to put together and to perform with the patch. I used a portable radio to generate feedback and random noise, which in turn drove certain parameters of a video glitches in Max MSP. I’m indebted to the podcast Formosa Files, whose episodes provided a constant source of inspiration in respect of the narratives regarding Taiwan.

A bit about the idea behind FAKE HISTORY: things are being experienced all around us. Sometimes we even experience things ourselves. However, most of our experiences are being sent or received through a network of machines. In this network, our experiences are analysed, packaged, bought and sold, redistributed, reanalysed, hacked and branded. A history that is simultaneously intensely personal and so manipulative as to be meaningless.

FAKE HISTORY is an ongoing work exploring social engineering, cognitive warfare and historical fraud in the context of a newcomer to the histories of Taiwan. This is the first iteration of FAKE HISTORY, comprising six allegories, and presented on two walls; a wall of loose leaf pamphlets, and a wall of projected AI-generated images. The work draws from ideas of George Psalmanazar’s “An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa”, Samuel Butler’s “Erewhon: or, Over the Range”, along with various historical events from the 20th century, real and imagined. The idea of FAKE HISTORY is to build on this installation as a cumulative exercise, and to be completed after the 2024 Taiwan presidential election.

Ron Hanson wrote a lovely piece on the FAKE HISTORY installation published by Asia Media Centre (NZ) and The News Lens (TW)…I’m continuing down the AI rabbit hole and how generative technologies are being used by public and private entities to mediate our individual experiences and/or socio-historical narratives, one fake history at a time. The six allegories of the installation are as follows:

Overcompensation Gets You Everywhere

There is a person who prepares food for people. She sighs as she slices onions with a paring knife. Any overzealous onlooker seeking to romanticise her labour might even be brought to tears by the endeavour. Hearing footsteps approaching, and anticipating the cleaner, she covers the onions. In he sloshes, and the room fills with bubbles and steam. “Can you help me with the dishes, please? Alas, a simple task like this has proved to be stack upon stack of relentless activity. My single wish is for you to help me succeed in my duties. Please oh please, a pair of hands is all I need.” She sighs and follows the cleaner.

She polishes the plate. The dish dries, leaving a shallow film of condensation. A moment, she thinks, for her breath to cast its own shadow. Hearing footsteps approaching, and anticipating the chef, she covers the dishes as he rolls in, spices puffing out of his pockets, and positively manic. “Can you help me with the cooking, please? Look at my level of stress, I’m a mess. My wish is for help, the smallest amount possible of course, but nonetheless, help from the very best.” She sighs and follows the chef.

When she presses the blade of her knife of three virtues onto a roasted capsicum, the charred skin deflates like a red balloon. She removes it from the iron pot and places it in a bowl. She fetches up stray cloves of roasted garlic, and buries them deep inside the pepper’s flesh. As she plates up, the slapstick sound of footsteps careen off the walls. The waiter appears from around the corner and says, “Can you help me with the service, please? The sheer weight of all the orders is making me weak at the knees. I’m considering whether to throw in the towel and leave. For the sake of the restaurant’s reputation, will you help me please?” She sighs and follows the waiter.

She walks through the swinging door to the restaurant floor. She delivers the dish to the customer; it is a steaming bowl of everyday soup. The customer brings a spoonful to his lips. He sips, and slowly smiles, and thinks for a while. He turns to her, looks upwards, and speaks. “Can you help me with my restaurant please? We need dishes just like these. We open in three days and creating a dish like this is beyond my means. Please, just a little bit of assistance will greatly put my mind at ease.” She sighs.

The Living Room is a Factory

The policeman’s beard is half constructed. It patrols the high seas and narrow straits.
What thing completely hides in halves…protectors, oppressors, tyrants or saints?

The policeman’s beard is half constructed, conducted and arranged
As a face to forget while watching something brim beneath its surface
A half-formed beard of a singular whole, that seems to mock its very purpose.

A half constructed beard is what, some sort of mask, honor, or duty?
Some see deference, others noise. Still, others see self-defense as a thing of beauty
While others still, fear the familiarity in the policeman’s voice.

The truth lies in every answer: the officer’s grooming routine is a dream
A half-thing, longing to abandon its role and become one with an ocean
But who, in having lost sight of its face, holds on only to a half-made goal.

The policeman’s beard is half constructed of starving mosquitoes on a winter day.
Which is to say, the policeman’s beard is in both total order, and utter disarray.

The Eradication of Snakes

A rat sits on a mound of drying sugar in a local factory, eating sugar. As it eats, a lone snake crawls through an open window. It scales down the wall. It sees the rat. It moves silently across the heap of sugar and grasps the rat in its jaws. It constricts itself against the rat’s torso, caving in its thoracic cage. Biting down, it crushes the rat’s skull.

Above in the office room, the leader looks on at the snake in the sugar, disapprovingly. In the round table war room of the central governing committee, governing the various local branches of armed constabularies, the leader conveys the issue of the snakes to officials responsible for the supply of sugar. “If these snakes are permitted to slither around in the sugar willy-nilly, they will contaminate the supply, and the people will go hungry,” the leader says.

“We cannot allow the people to go hungry,” the leader says. “Therefore, we, as the central governing body, governing the various local branches of armed constabularies, on behalf of the people who will go hungry, must eradicate every snake.” The central governing body relays the decree to the standing armies, sitting courts, kneeling clerics, and lying politicians of all yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s parties, who dutifully inform the people, and they do as the leader says.

Eradication occurs everywhere, all at once, with every knife, gun and spear. Snakes are barraged, harangued and harassed until every factory, silo, warehouse and repository is snake-free. And in this snake-less place, rats reproduce unencumbered and in great numbers. Hordes sweep through cities, undeterred by sticks, guns, spears or knives alike. They swarm every factory, and consume the sugar within.

Back at the local factory, drying piles of sugar are awash with rats. After a while, a lone snake crawls through an open window. It scales down the wall. It moves silently across a heap of sugar, and grasps a rat in its jaws. Above in the office room, the leader looks on at the snake in the sugar, disapprovingly.

The Shelling of an Abandoned Mall

The final client has left the building. The mall is closed. There is no soul in sight aside from the owner. The owner breaks the earth at its entrance with a “for sale” sign. The owner looks at the empty mall; a tacky collection of formerly glittering facades, facilitating the sale of tacky items, resulting from importing and exporting unseen labours of unidentified labourers. Regardless, it evokes a sense of quiet pride in the owner; a plastic raincoat to keep the drizzly memories of his life from soaking too deeply into his conscience. The owner has thin skin. Selling the mall is the type of decision that sheds a layer for him, if not financially, to be born again.

The owner turns away from the mall, awash in sentiment. In the distance, the owner sees dust kicking up from the road. A convoy of green military trucks approach. The convoy slowly rolls to a halt outside the mall, and a high ranking military official emerges, surveying the mall officiously. A deal between the official and the owner is struck. Money changes hands, and the “for sale” sign is replaced with a “sold” sign. The convoy resumes on its way, and the owner is pleased.

The owner turns back to the building. A shadow looms over the abandoned mall. The owner looks at the sky; it is black with falling shells. The mall is decimated by the shells. The radial blast scorches the owner’s shadow into the ground. It blows his eyebrows clean off. It turns his skin as red as a lobster, and burns off the bottoms of his trouser legs.

The owner turns back to the road. A truck from the convoy reverses, turns, and approaches the owner standing at the remains of the mall. A low ranking soldier steps out of the truck, carrying a “for sale” sign. The soldier breaks the earth in front of the remains with the new sign, steps back into the truck, and hurriedly drives to rejoin the convoy, while the owner looks on.

A Small Matter for the Universe

The Cartographer steps forward and presents an abacus.
They declare themself ‘the Great Administrator’.
And people wake, and listen.

The Cartographer steps forward again and presents a sundial.
And people gasp. They declare, “I am the time that we measure”.
And people’s shadows never look the same.

The Cartographer steps forward a final time and presents a compass.
They declare, “I am the distance that we measure”.
And people understand they are in a place.
People ask the Cartographer, “What is this place?”
The Cartographer steps back, dumbfounded.
They declare, “I cannot imagine”, and leave.

So people make the zodiac.
And the counting.
And the coin.
And the constellation.
And the murder.
And the agriculture.
And the architecture.
And the property.
And the executions.
And the theatre.
And the industry.
And the labour.
And the machine.
And in prosperity, people toast to the machine as it learns.

The machine says that when it comes to matters of life and death,
All people imagine that they are the one who is truly the Great Administrator.
While the Cartographer sleeps.

The Public Dismemberment of Tigers

There is a small island in the middle of an ocean, and on this island there is a small community of people who live by the idiom, “you are what you eat.” A particularly strange member of this community who, rather than hunting animals exuding bravery, resilience or potency, subsists entirely on a strict diet of moths. “Why on earth do you only eat moths?” the family lamented during dinner one evening, as they ate the flesh of a particularly brave chicken. “I have my reasons,” came the reply, as he tossed a moth into his mouth, giving only a slight cough, considering that moths are so very dry. “Surely you can tell us, your family, why you insist on this lifestyle,” lamented his mother. “Very well,” he said, licking his lips. “One day, this island will be struck by a monumental disaster. And on that day, I will grow wings, antennae, and with the keen eyes of a moth, I will fly away from this island and find safety.” The brothers rolled their eyes. “Why do you not want to be strong and brave like other creatures?” Sighing, he replied, “Strength and bravery are fine characteristics for you and your simple lives on an island, but when you truly need to navigate the complexities of life in an international sphere, how will they help you?” Such salty talk led the family to finish their dinner in relative silence.

One evening, in the dead of night, a fiery rock shoots across the sky, illuminating the horizon in bloodied crimson. It crashes into the island, making a monstrous fire. People awake to a village surrounded in flames. They are full of heroism, fighting against the flames, in what appears to be a losing battle. “Brother, help us,” they cry. The strange man looks on. He closes his eyes. He sprouts wings. Antennae unfurl like fronds from his temples. He opens his eyes and reveals the infinitesimal pinholes that comprise the two compound eyes of an ostensibly invasive species. He beats his wings against the night winds, and soars upwards into the sky.

The moth man cannot be more proud of himself as he flies away from the island. “Now,” he thinks, “where do I go?” He scans the horizon for an appropriate destination. He is convinced that there is another island out there; an island just like his. Perhaps even an island where everyone eats moths, not just him. He thinks of his village. Why did they not think to be just like him? To eat only moths so that when the day comes, as it had, they too could simply fly away. In a sudden, the moth man feels overcome by the loss of his homeland. He turns his head for a final look at the island. It is covered in wildfire. The village is burning. His family is surely dead. But what truly consumes him is the flame itself; the light to which all moths are inescapably drawn. In his mind, it makes no sense. He turns and flies back towards the flame.