Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė
Gusła (3f912aedb415c443)

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė show holographic GAN animations with the 3-channel video installation Gusła (2020) on three LED fans hung next to each other. The representation of an eye, consisting of an almond-shaped nut with a human or animal iris in its centre, forms the starting point for numerous, mostly fragmented mixed beings that develop from it, contracting and expanding again in an intrinsic pictorial rhythm. This rhythmic morphing extends to the interplay of the three pictorial fields with each other. The figures appear in front of mostly rural backgrounds of meadows or rock formations with deceptively real-looking, haptic textures, which, however, turn out to be artificial on closer inspection. For example, we see feather crystals, fur flowers or rhino skin feathers. This artificiality, constantly suspended between various natural meanings, opens up a firework of associations, depending on the viewer's own horizon of memory and experience.

The title Gusła means witchcraft in Polish, the knowledge of witches and healers about the transformation of matter. Gawęda and Kulbokaitė employ a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) as a network-based re-enactment of alchemical, matter-transforming rituals. GAN translates as generative adversarial network, which has been used in the machine learning sector since around 2014. The GAN consists of two coupled networks, one of which generates artificial images that are intended to appear as real as possible, while the other checks the authenticity of the images and reports the errors back to the first. If both networks are equally strong, they become better and better through the exchange, both in generating deceptively real-looking images and in recognising errors. In Gusła, the glitches of this perfection are revealed as breaking points, as it were, by morphing obviously incompatible properties such as rhino skin and feathers. The GAN-based visual worlds thus function as a catalyst, or digital alchemy, for an exuberant, category-busting and transforming creativity on the part of the artists as well as the viewers.

Text: Bettina Back