FabulAI Pyramid is where the literary concept of fabulation meets contemporary art installation. It is a fiction designed expressly to address the entangled issues around artificial intelligence and late capitalism. It presents a dystopian world similar to our own as a way to see ourselves as if from a distance, allowing the space for new thoughts and feelings to arise.
FabulAI Pyramid provides a glimpse into an alternate reality where an unpersecuted Wilhelm Reich drove humanity to new heights beyond his Bion particle research and massively transformational Orgone therapy. The Altern is a dimension where Reich succeeded in revealing the fundamental material reality of imagination itself with his discovery of the Cion particle. A Cionics empowered Altern tech culture now teeters on the brink of creating an almighty artificial imagination.
You are invited to engage and participate in the creation of this fiction, FabulAI Pyramid, with your own hopes and concerns for AI. Explore the concept of Artificial Imagination in Virtual Reality. Question the ethics of algorithmic creativity. Marvel at the prospect of machinic nonsense attaining full-on contemporary art status. Quest to build your own FabulAI Pyramid and unlock the boundless potential of technology fueled Imagination.
Wilhelm Reich
Lander is an installation and multimedia artist interested in play, humor, philosophy, artificial imagination and other elements of the absurd. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from UCLA in 2017. |
For decades I thought of art in a way that emphasized product. I was concerned with creating images or objects which could be displayed and hopefully purchased.
The model I had created about what art is and what an artist should be was pretty static and closed. It matched up with our society’s emphasis on trying to be an expert in something and finding a way to sell that expertise to others as a product in a competitive market. Ultimately this left me feeling isolated and anxious and uninspired. I began to seek out art that spoke to me in ways far deeper than “oh, that is a cool image” or “wow, that person is really great at this or that technique.” I found this deeper connection in the work of outsider artists. These were people who did not make art for sale, for a market, or as decorative objects, but rather as ways to understand the world through the processes of art making. Making art is a way of thinking, just as writing can be. This shift in my mind from product to process has been very fruitful for me. I invite responses that can be incorporated into my process. This forces my process and my mode of making art to remain open, flexible and dynamic, and to seek engagement with contemporary media like VR and 360 photography. I’m not touting myself as an expert in any of this. I am only exploring the possibilities of art making as a continuous re-modeling of the world and my mind. Regarding style- Marcel Duchamp remains the most important artist in my own experience of art. I learned about his work in college and thought I had understood and absorbed his ideas at that time. However, each time I return to his work it continues to shape my thinking in new ways. The opening of my mind and the dislodging of the capitalist based model of art from my thinking eventually led me to appreciate most the expressive techniques of anti-art both in the hands of the Dadaists and outsider artists in general. The techniques with the greatest appeal to me are those of collage and assemblage which I find to be the most poetic modes of visual art. Whereas illusionist art invites a viewer to suspend her disbelief to enter a fantasy, assemblage, mixed media and installation art ask that you suspend your belief. We are always already immersed in systems of thought and meaning reinforced by cohesive and harmonious styles. Mixed media art, by the nature of its juxtapositions and jarring transitions, demands cognitive efforts from its viewer to construct meaning. Illusionistic art remains primarily closed and reinforces models of reality already widely accepted. Mixed media art can crack those models open, show us the seams and hint at new modes of thinking and being. artists like Marcel Duchamp, Chris Burden, Jason Rhodes and most recently Thomas Hirschhorn are important guides in my journey as an artist. Each of them engages(d) with contemporary ideas and sought to keep their minds and models of the world open and receptive. Hirschhorn in particular challenges the prevailing model of art as exclusive and elitist in its emphasis on quality, high production and material value. He foregrounds ideas and his own passions through the creative use of the material excesses of our society. |