If AI?

KRAKEN? Goldsmiths Visual Cultures Presentation 2019

A presentation by 0rphan Drift’s Maggie Roberts and Etic Lab’s Stephanie Moran and Kevin Hogan, asking what it might mean to communicate with an Alien Intelligence and how might we try to do it? The event was hosted by Ramon Amaro of Goldsmiths University Visual Cultures Department. We discuss the ongoing collaboration between artist 0rphan Drift and tech research agency Etic Lab to explore the conceptual and material conditions in which an algorithm might learn to communicate with an octopus.
If AI were Cephalopod 2019

If AI were Cephalopod is a 4 screen video installation made for Telematic Gallery, San Francisco, which opened in May 2019. The work presents a lot of questions about the formation of the notion of intelligence – where does the model of intelligence come from in relation to the development of AI – and what are the implications of those choices. The work ultimately suggest we may not know what we are doing in creating these systems.
Uncanny Valley Difficult Kin 2019

This is the title of 0rphan Drift collaborator Maggie Roberts (aka Mer)’s’ solo exhibition at Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth. The exhibition was awarded to her as winner of the annual EMERGENCY international open submission (2017). The video ‘Conscious Exotica’ is included here because it is part of our ongoing exploration into nonhuman consciousness, whether synthetic or organic, and precedes the ‘If AI were Cephalopod’ exhibition, which re imagines some of the footage and soundscape originally produced for this work.
Interspecies Disco 2018

The Interspecies Disco is an ongoing project developed in collaboration with Kirsten Cooke and Joe Walsh. It was inspired by the eerie, seductive and mesmerizing reading techniques used by ASMR Youtube performers, and has had several iterations, the first being at Skeen Nite Come with Plastique Fantastique at CGP Gallery, London, where the performers were drenched in blue light. It’s most complex experiment to date involved the animal (Cat), techno entities (BioDiamonda) and AI octopus (OctoGANN), meeting through the non linear spaces opened by several topographical anomalies appearing in each of their habitats or environments. This performance was part of Maggie Roberts’ solo ACE funded exhibition, Uncanny Valley, Difficult Kin at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth 2019.
Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender and Resistance, Nottingham Contemporary 2018

This major exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, spanning the 19th century to today, explored the history of resistance movements and alternative forms of living from a gendered perspective, grounded in intersectional queer and feminist thinking. 0rphan Drift was included in the ‘A Spell: Feminism Beyond Humanism’ gallery.
The Shaping of a Message in three parts. Goldsmiths Visual Cultures Presentation 2018

The last in the series of talks organized by Maggie Roberts with Simon O’Sullivan of Goldsmiths Visual Cultures Department as part of her Research Fellowship. Maggie was excited to have the opportunity to bring these specific radical, sensitive deep minds (in their bodies) together, some of whom she had worked with and been influenced by over many years. Others she resonated with more recently during her time in Visual Cultures. The 5 hour long Symposium provided a platform for sharing research and for opening discussion around the themes that in some ways underpin the 2018 onwards 0rphan Drift focus.
Miasma, Chrominance II, Res Gallery 2018

Miasma was made with ACE support for Alembic, the Res. Gallery Kathy Ray Huffman experimental video catalogue collection commission. Contemporary women artists were invited to propose a work responding to specific texts in the collection. The most important publication for this work was Reza Negarastani and Mark Fisher’s article Trash/Streams (Wasteland) in CTM 2012 Spectral.
Green Skeen 2017-2018

Green Skeen was a 2 year long 0rphan Drift collaboration with Plastique Fantastique, manifesting as a series of filmed performance ritual fictionings in which a group of techno animals summon the Green Skeen animal. It wanders the city until they recapture it in order to unleash the Ultimate App in the Apple Flagship Store in Regent Street, London. The film has been screened at several Skeen Nite Come events, notably at The Horse Hospital and CPG London, Supernormal Festival, Gloucester and Skullcraker Suite in Vancouver, Canada.
Cat Ice Trickster 2017

For Hyperdub Label’s monthly night at Corsica Studios, London. Kode 9 and Shannen SP organize the Ø night, for which they invite an artist to showcase an AV project in one of the two spaces. The other hosts a DJ line up of cutting edge Hyperdub associates. 0rphan Drift installed Cat Ice Trickster for one of these nights, working with Jason Stapleton of Lightfarm on Lidar scan animations of urban, forest and ocean environments in and around Capetown, South Africa. Mike Vertolli collaborated on the Google Deep Dream video coding.