We visited the VAG's Imitation Game: Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence exhibition earlier this week. Those who were there to learn something likely did, certainly on the topic of artificial intelligence and its myriad uses and abuses. As for those keen on seeing some art, the Kids Take Over exhibition had works from old school analogue types Michael Morris (b.1942), Gathie Falk (b. 1928) and Audrey Capel Doray (b.1931). Also included are three works with "Redacted" in their titles, by Chantal Gibson.
What distinguishes Gibson's redactions from the many artists, writers and public and private administrators working in this vein is that we don't see the redactions so much as the material used to make them (the titles tell us what we are looking at). The material in this instance is more ink than the book itself agreed to for publication (though Gibson cast liquid rubber in that role, to give the "ink" greater resonance). The book is expelling the excess ink, as if the book was made by its author and the author no like it. But books are generally made by publishers, busineses that assume the risk in making them and, if that risk pays off, profit at a greater rate than their authors.
One of the great works of the 20th century is Robert Morris's Box With the Sound of Its Own Making (1961). Unlike Gibson's entitled redactions, where seeing is believing, Morris's self-mythologizing sculpture asks that we be there to hear, both literally and humorously, what it makes of itself.
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