Macrostructure
Artist project displayed in the historic cellars of Casino Luxembourg.
Macrostructure is a multi-screen projection installation, based on the eponymous 2013 short film Macrostructure (What If You Created Artificial Life And It Started Worshipping You) by Eric Schockmel. The work, in a semi-abstract visual language, borrowing elements from science fiction and computer games, deals with issues surrounding bioethics, computational science, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and primal worship.
"Eric Schockmel's three-dimensional works for the What If You Created Artificial Life And It Started Worshipping You series appear as detailed universes in which he creates enclaves of animation that lead to these technical but very tender sequences. Life-affirming in their atmospheric tension, Schockmel's short animations serve to demonstrate that he seeks to address a whole series of very complex and equally compelling ideas via the compass of animation, not least the Technological Singularity's effect from artificial intelligence, first discussed by Historian Henry Adams in the early 1990's. The controversial advances of bioethics, and the sustained interest for primal worship both address the balance between man and nature. Delivering art as science fiction, Schockmel's work appears to demonstrate that there is a central life source at the root of everything. And that however sophisticated such mechanised scenarios become, there is an elemental energy that furnishes all life. Significantly Schockmel's video-game aesthetic references a future in which technology can potentially become sophisticated enough to allow for the birth of automated organisms, that themselves evolve the sentience of their own self-awareness, and subsequently start to worship their creators. Schockmel's visionary work takes us on a profound journey that is as technologically trusting as it is aesthetically attractive."
Text by Rajesh Punj, published on seditionart.comDigital editions by Eric Schockmel available on seditionart.com
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