Ever Abeokuta
Fine art print. Mixed media: photography. Text to image data translation from deep learning model. Virtually hand-modelled sculpture from data output. Digital collage. 53 x 83cm Edition 1 of 3, 2021
Direct Translation Diptych 2 (of 4)
Diptych. Mixed Media: antique paper and ink. Text to image data translation from deep learning model. Virtually hand-modelled sculpture from data output. 80cm x 40cm, 2021
Deference
Fine art print. Mixed media: Photography. Text to image data translation from deep learning model. Virtually hand-modelled sculpture from data output. Digital collage. 54cm x 74cm Edition 1 of 3, 2021
Red Earth
Fine art print 45 x 30cm Edition 1 of 3, 2020
Solitary Breath
12 minutes.
Single channel video loop.
2021
Project overview
Red Earth: An interdisciplinary study for the preservation and advancement of non-western cultural heritage
Where do the resources sustaining and developing AI and virtual futures come from? Which cultures and languages will be preserved in a virtual afterlife? Who gets to live forever?
Red Earth is an ongoing artistic and interdisciplinary study centred on prose reflections and drawing attention to the precarious status of non-western cultural heritage, knowledge systems and practices in the increasingly dominant western systems of digital data and AI technologies.
A series of interconnected works combining photography, prose, video and appropriated processes from machine learning models engaged in computational methods of translation, Red Earth aims to draw attention to complicated cross-cultural realities and creative practices neglected by technological advancement which springs from a singular knowledge system.
The project interrogates the ways in which colonial legacies and practices are bound up in the knowledge architecture of programming languages. Equally, extraction of natural resources from the African continent, from rare metals to human data and cheap labour, powers the future of increasingly energy intensive computer hardware.
The African continent has a young, tech-literate population for which Google is building a subsea data cabling route from Portugal to South Africa. Africa stands on the edge of a digital transformation. In Red Earth, converting the red clay of West Africa into soil nutritious enough to nurture and grow life serves as a metaphor for shaping the process-based, linguistic, visual and computational ‘translations’ used to reflect on Africa’s digital future.
Red Earth’s processes begin with a series of observational photographs. These inspire a book-length work of prose by the artist which serves as material for the eventual artworks – a series of interconnected ideas and 3D models, a merging of photography, prose, video and computational translation between media. Working with Yoruba thought and culture, Red Earth suggests the beginnings of alternative virtual archives of writing and creative practice for the emerging digital future of Africa.
Read more about the project: https://houseofthought.io/redearth
Read an extract of Red Earth (2022): https://flatjournal.com/work/red-earth/
All works created by Michael Salu.
Michael Salu
Michael Salu is a British-born Nigerian writer, artist, editor and curator. As a scholar and creative strategist with a strongly interdisciplinary practice, he has produced creative and critical work on technological and geopolitical changes in society and culture. His written work has appeared in literary journals, magazines, art and academic publications, and as an artist he has exhibited internationally.
© Michael Salu