Grand Final Opening
The solo exhibition of Gints Gabrāns' new work, GRAND FINAL OPENING, is created by the artist in collaboration with artificial intelligence (AI). The event takes place both at the Art Station Dubulti and in the urban environment of Jūrmala. Project can be seen throughout the territory of Latvia with the augmented reality application SAN (download www.san.lv).
Artist Gints Gabrāns talks about his new work: “My work features artificial intelligence-generated exhibition openings, using 2000 photographs from Latvian contemporary art exhibition openings (LCCA, KIM?, RIBOCA, LNMA, Dubulti etc.) as the basis for neural network training. These newly created generative visions, used in the works, allow us not only to get to know and enjoy the strangeness of the unfamiliar gaze but can also help us to see and discover the hidden patterns and structures in our man-made world. The work process uses neural networks: self-learning systems that accumulate experience (in this case, recognition of images from exhibition openings) and genetic algorithms that create original populations (by selecting images from exhibition openings), and from crossing population generations. Through random mutations, new generations are created with the selection of the best candidates. The process is evolutionary and iterative*. The selection is based on artistic subjective criteria.”
The curator of the exhibition, Inga Šteimane, interprets the contexts of the work: “Since the first exhibitions in the 1990s, Gints Gabrāns has “violated” conventions and created works (installations, performative work, communication-based work, light sculptures, etc) that provoke the viewer to critically evaluate notions of order (Art Is Not for Eating (1994), The Knife With Which to Cut Your Ass (1995), Biosport (1996), Riga dating office (2000), Starix (2001), if point out on some. Paradoxically, he has been able to design these moves in an aesthetically appealing way, revealing his classical competence - the ability to love beauty in contemporary situation. For example, his Beauty Mirrors (2007), that brought about properties of reflected and radiated light that affect the skin in the so-called “therapeutic window”, regenerates cells of the facial skin, making one more beautiful. From 2015 Gints Gabrāns has been developing the augmented reality application SAN which creates the borderless space for art works. The new works in the exhibition GRAND FINAL OPENING are just that - beautiful, plot fun, and technologically advanced.
The leading contemporary existential risk researcher, the philosopher Nick Bostrom (Niklas Boström) in his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014)** concludes that we, humans, are like young children playing with a bomb in front of the prospect of an artificial intelligence explosion - he sees such a huge difference between the power of this "toy" and our infantile behavior. The challenge facing humanity is not to deviate from humanity, that Bostrom describes in three aspects: common sense, kindness and integrity. Under the commands of Gints Gabrāns, AI has generated figurative visions of the exhibition openings, that show reminiscences of modern painting at its dawn - Symbolism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Impressionism, Surrealism, etc. AI presents a surprisingly similar image culture to the modern "isms" once created by biological intelligence, which emphasized the uniqueness of painting in the Industrial Age with the help of human thinking. Like many other manifestations of AI, there is currently no complete explanation for this, but AI researchers put forward a version that man is most like a machine when he thinks, whereas the human basis is the unconscious layers of our intellect.
For social narrative researchers, the GRAND FINAL OPENING is confusing because it breaks one's head when looking for a reference point for critical interpretations deciding on the addressee: is it now ("about us") or in the future ("about them with artificial superintelligence"). Gints Gabrāns claims that art is a mutation that creates changes in culture, thus complementing the long and varied series of art truth manifests.”
The Art Station Dubulti in the project of Gints Gabrāns is designed as a conditional information center, where visions generated by AI can be viewed in digital prints and video. There is also information in the exhibition hall about the previous objects of the augmented reality application SAN throughout Latvia. Poster poles with large informative billboards about what is “hidden in the air” help viewers to navigate in the urban environment of Jūrmala:
Priedaine - at the railway station Priedaine
Babītes street Lielupe - at the RIMI Lielupe, Rīgas street
Bulduri - at the Meža prospekts (near old department store)
Bulduri - at the Edinburgas prospekts, in the park
Majori - at the railway station Majori
Majori - Jomas street, near the hotel Jūrmala SPA
Majori - Jomas street, near the Narvesen kiosk
Majori - near the intersection of Jomas street and Kaudzīšu street (1)
Majori - near the intersection of Jomas street and Kaudzīšu street (2)
Dubulti - near the Art Station Dubulti
Ķemeri - at the intersection of Robežu street and Alejas street Ķemeri - in the E. Dārziņa street, territory of the park
Kauguri - at the railway station Sloka, Satiksmes street
Kauguri - Mazā Nometņu street, near the RIMI Kauguri
Music - Platons Buravickis, graphic design - Līga Spunde, AR animation - Aldis Kopštāls, technical assistant - Gustavs Lociks.
The exhibition is supported by Jūrmala City Council, State Culture Capital Foundation (scholarship for the artist), AKKA / LAA (scholarship for the artist), Dzintari Concert Hall. Thank you Overly and Jānis Zuzāns.
Help for users: application SAN can be downloaded from the website san.lv. In the territory of Jūrmala, click “download”, elsewhere in Latvia, open from the project list “Grand Final Opening” and click “download”. User-created images and videos can be sent using the SHARE button. Artist: gints@gabrans.com, Art Station Dubulti: dubulti.art.station@gmail.com.
ABOUT THE ARTIST. Gints Gabrāns (1970) created the augmented reality application SAN in 2015, using virtual 3D models and GPS addresses as art material. The SAN application is based on a new unique solution that allows to create GPS-based large-scale virtual structures that appear on smart devices as augmented reality 3D objects. They can be seen from different points of view, and you can move through them. Virtual objects have an independent GPS location in the room without optical markers or planes, as in other augmented reality applications. www.gabrans.com
ABOUT THE ART STATION DUBULTI. Art Station Dubulti is the only professional exhibition hall in Europe, located in a functioning railway station. It has been operating since 2015, when the idea of multi- functionality was embodied in the modernistic building from 1970s with a significant concrete silhouette. Art Station Dubulti creates solo exhibitions and conceptual projects of the best Latvian artists, international projects and paying attention to the exhibition as a dialogue between a work of art and the spectator. The program is implemented with the support of Jūrmala City Council. The head of the Art Station Dubulti is art critic and curator Inga Šteimane.
The exhibition is on view from June 21st until September 13th, 2020, every day from 9.00 to 18.30. Free entrance. Excursions in the exhibition: 04.07. at 15.00, 02.08. at 15.00, 06.09. at 15.00. To book an individual tour, write to: https://www.facebook.com/ artstationdubulti or: dubulti.art.station@gmail.com.
* Iterative - expresses an action that repeats or an action that occurs intermittently.
** Niks Bostroms. Superintelekts. Attīstības ceļi, riski, stratēģijas. Jumava, 2017. Translated in latvian by N. Pukjans from Nick Bostrom. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press, 2014.