"The Eternal Now Engine" by resonAIte feat. Lynn Hershman Leeson

The exhibition titled Extensions of Self (Francisco Carolinum Linz, 06.09.23 - 28.01.24), curated by Eva Fischer and designed by Maria Rudakova,

explores the possibility of ultimately finding a new approach to coping with the trauma of the current Anthropocene through an exchange with artificial intelligence [...]

What would be more obvious than taking Lynn Hershman Leeson's body of work as a starting point for this type of exploration? She has been pioneering the artistic research of AI since as early as the late 1990s.

Commissioned by the Francisco Carolinum Linz Museum, we set out to cite and juxtapose her classic 2014 multimedia installation "The Infinity Engine" with current tendencies of AI generated/interpreted art.

Eternalism, or Everything Everywhere All at Once

Conceptually, "The Eternal Now Engine" takes the underpinnings of "The Infinity Engine" and turns them upside down. Rather than asking how humanity can transcend large timespans, it paraphrases the notion of eternalism (one specific interpretation of Special Relativity concluding that time in fact doesn't exist and everything is happening all at once instead, albeit in four dimensions).

In other words, the spectator is cast into the role of "God, who stands outside of time" (Augustine) and watches multiple alternative presences unfold all at once. Starting from a "seed image", AI (in the form of the StableDiffusion algorithm) enters a resonating cycle of describing and creating the same setting ever and ever again, resulting in endless permutations of a certain scenery.

As a side effect, we see a quasi-evolutional recursive process take place, slowly carving out the archetypes that are buried deep in the artificial intelligence's subsymbolic innards.

A Multi-Sensual Experience

Since we experience our world in three dimensions, the rendered images were morphed and joined consecutively into four videos. They then served as prompts to compose four pieces of binaural electroacoustic music, reflecting the mood and purport of the respective procession of images.