Heterochromatic Possibilities

Using a stream of consciousness, the animation, generated with the help of machine learning, takes up the time of interaction and communication with different people shaped by online conferencing, reflects on the question of commonality in these distance formats, the role of the private in the persistent home mode, as well as the role of narration and exchange via online conferencing tools. The sequences emerged from the symbiosis of a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) and hand drawings. Trained by zoom-camera self-portraits, the machine colored several hundred drawings made by the artist of her interlocutors and herself during virtual sessions using the Pix2Pix process. The video work is in dialogue with site-specific murals that represent a scaling of the original drawings. In biology, heterochromatin refers to a condensed form of the material in the cell nucleus that makes up chromosomes and is readily stained. The fusion of drawing, inner monologue, colored pixels, and advancing time attempts to capture condensations in simultaneity and make them tangible. The images are accompanied by a narrative stream of consciousness, which in the end raises the question of technical memory: What should not be recognized? The revelation of the self.