Part of Six Minutes Re:search (Lab → Output)
Virtual installation, Newart.city
surfacecollider extends James Irwin’s doctoral research at the Contemporary Art Research Centre, Kingston School of Art. The project investigates what happens at the threshold where code becomes image - bypassing lens-based image production to speculate on the kinds of images machines make.
Rather than representing the world as seen, the work foregrounds a visual language produced through collaboration with computational systems. Software and hardware are not tools but participants. The resulting imagery appears unfamiliar, often alien - abstract patterns and colour-fields that resist representation and deny stable points of reference.
As viewers interact through screen, keyboard and mouse, code is activated and abstract forms are summoned to the rectangular display. Images flicker and cycle in rhythms that echo organic processes. Irwin locates a form of vitalism within code-based imagery — a suggestion that subjectivity extends beyond the human body into machinic entities.
The project positions the human user as a conduit for synthetic production. Computational appendages become extensions of the body. Authorship is redistributed.
A custom-tuned version of GPT-3 generates textual outputs in real time as users interact with the work. These writings emerge at the moment of engagement, recombining the actions of viewer, artist and artificial intelligence.
The authorial voice becomes dispersed across multiple bodies — human and non-human — forming an evolving archive of machine-mediated writing. The project acknowledges subjectivity as networked, fragmented and more-than-human.
Sound composition extends the visual logic into spatial audio.
ASMR tracks sourced from YouTube were sampled and processed in Ableton Live. Human whispers and ticks were digitally altered to resemble machinic signals. Individual sound layers were exported and positioned at different coordinates within the Newart.city environment.
As users move through the space, sounds activate and accumulate. Repeating rhythms and synthetic textures reinforce the visual abstraction, producing a hyper-synthetic digital field.
James Irwin
PhD Candidate and Associate Lecturer, University of the Arts London
surfacecollider documents a research-led exploration of machinic image production, distributed authorship and computational embodiment within a virtual exhibition space.