In ‘LAWKI’, a network of unsupervised algorithms curates from a database of online videos. The machine’s compositional gesture broadcasts a new story of today, in which reality merges with the techno-imaginative.
LAWKI rejects the capitalist mode of production by creating new content through digital mashup. The spatial installation invites audiences to move between, interact, and play with the screens to recalibrate how media environments are organized. In this walk of wonder, the viewer is not merely a consumer of the cacophonic spectacle but an active co-creator of both process and outcome.
LAWKI reflects on knowledge production in the contemporary, highly mediated world. However immersive, overwhelming, or confronting, the installation does not aim to outline any comprehensive image of reality. Instead, it exemplifies the biases inherent to current technologies and existing databases. The audience is invited to reveal new visual sequences, observe riddling connections, and draw unexpected conclusions.
For the project LAWKI, ARK extended internationally and across disciplines. The group consists of designers and researchers: Louis Braddock Clarke, Roosje Klap, Senka Milutinović, and Zuzanna Zgierska; philosopher Federico Campagna; composer Teoniki Rożynek; computer scientists Arran Lyon and Valentin Vogelmann. ARK’s hybrid method of exchanging knowledge and developing work reflects its artistic ambition to make modern technologies open-ended, inclusive, and fair spaces of participation. Through the process of commoning between humans and algorithms, new knowledges emerge.
ARK Members
Arran Lyon, Federico Campagna, Louis Braddock Clarke, Roosje Klap, Senka Milutinovic, Teoniki Rozynek, Valentin Vogelmann, and Zuzanna Zgierska.
Photo: ARK
Photo: Hanneke Wetzer; Edited: Zuza Zgierska
ARK, ‘LAWKI—Passages’, ohoto montage (impression), 2022.