Roger Bays

Boids of a Feather Stick Together

This interactive animation is a vibe-coded artwork that has three sliders, enabling you to interact with the boids.

It is freely available for personal use. 

To view the animation and interact with the boids please click here.

What is vibe coding?

Vibe coding is a method of coding where the coder (in this case me) collaborates with an AI through a lengthy chain of dialogue, to come up with the correct code for the job.

An Hallucinating Extromissionist Looking in the Mirror

This animated work is probably best viewed on your phone because it will automatically loop. Some phones may behave differently!

It is freely available for personal use. 

To view the animation click here.

Supple Wrist

This art happening is an interactive work, an AI designed pinball game.

To play click here.

Technicolour Man

This art happening is a digital image from a drawing.

It is freely available for personal use.

To view the image at a higher resolution click here. 

Ai Hallucinating

This animation is best viewed on your phone because it will automatically loop and you can interact with it by zooming in to different details.

Note: some phones may behave differently.

It is freely available for personal use. 

To view the animation click here.

Champagne Meditation by the Pool

This video is best viewed on your phone because it will automatically loop.

It is freely available for personal use.

To view the video click here.

Feeding the Mouth of the Ai Monster

In this event I put my feet up, and fed the previous art happening (ARThappeningHERE 005) event into Ai. The result is two podcasts about that work.

The first podcast {Ai Recording (A) below} discusses Step 2 of ARThappeningHERE 005, which used mathematical set theory to explore consciousness and qualia.

The second podcast {Ai Recording (B) below} discusses Step 3 of ARThappeningHERE 005, which suggests that our ideas about external reality are not necessarily wrong, but unprovable.

The recordings (script and voices) were completely created by Google Notebook LM's Ai engine. Much to my surprise, Ai accurately understood just about everything it was fed. What will the future hold!

Note: Step 1 of ARThappeningHERE 005 (an image), was not given to Ai to discuss.

To hear the podcasts click on the links below.

Ai recording A

Ai recording B

You are in the Qualiaverse

You are in the Qualiaverse is an interactive and collaborative work that has three steps. The steps involve interacting with QR codes by collaborating with friends or acquaintances, to make the scans.

Step 1:

View the first image (step one), then scan the QR code, this will take you to step two. 

Step 2:

Read the mathematical set theory, then scan the QR code at the bottom of the page, this will take you to step three.

Step 3:

Read the abstract and maybe contemplate whether you live in a Qualiaverse or a Universe.

If Trees Could Talk

If you missed the event, you can take part in a post-event online component here. 

This art happening will involve a one kilometre guided walk through Bottle Lake Forest Park (near the beach) along a well defined path.

During the walk you will be invited to use your phone to scan six QR codes. You will also be invited to collaborate with others to scan six additional codes that reside in a virtual space.

What to bring: a charged phone with an internet connection and a method to scan QR codes e.g. using your phone camera app (some phones) or using a QR code scanning app (NOT the covid app).

If you need a QR scanning app . . . the "Google Lens," app offers QR scanning and more.

If you don't have a suitable phone come anyway, there will be plenty of phones around.

To check your phone is ready to go, use this QR test code.

Covid dependent: Yes, but no problem under red.

Weather dependent: Yes. It will happen even if light showers are forecast, but will be cancelled if rain is forecast.

Is it on? Current status = YES.

Time: Thursday 17th February 2022 at 6:00pm (sharp). We will be leaving the car park to start walking at 6:04pm.

Duration: Approx 1 hr 30 mins.

Location: Corner of Aston Drive & Torrey Pines , Christchurch, New Zealand.

Post-event online component

If you missed the event, you can take part in a post-event online component here.

60 years of photography

I took my first photograph (above) in 1961 when I was three years old. To celebrate 60 years of photography I will show 60 figurative photographs that include people, animals, or beings of some form.

Weather dependent: No (it will be held inside).

Covid dependent: Yes (it is on if we are at level 2).

What to bring: The show will now be held indoors, so no need to bring a blanket or chair.

Is it on? Current status = yes.

Time: Thursday 2nd December at 5.30pm (New Zealand Time).

Location: Edgeware, Christchurch, NZ.

Photographing Poland

I will be showing 192 street photography/documentary photography images of my journey through Poland during 2014. Images will be displayed in chronological order and straight from camera, with no alterations/cropping.

Weather dependent: No

Is it on? Yes

Time: Tuesday 29th August 2017 at 7.30pm (New Zealand Time)

Location: Toi te Karoro studio (at the new location in the former Old Central New Brighton School) use entrance opposite New Brighton Fire Station on Hawke St, New Brighton, Christchurch, New Zealand.

An exploration of consciousness and causality

Time: Friday 4th November 2016 at 6pm (New Zealand Time).

Weather dependent: This event is rain and wind dependent, it needs dry ground and not too much wind.

Is it on? Yes.

Forecast: partly cloudy

General Location: New Brighton, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Exact Spot (announced 2 hrs before the event): Corner of Wairoa St, and Orari St (just off Pages Road beside the Avon River). Plenty of parking. Roadworks prevent travel east on some sections of Pages Road. However, it is open in both directions east of highway 74, which is handy.

If you keep this page loaded on your phone you can also use the handy site guide (below) when you get to the event, though paper copies will be available.

Site guide: Use the guide below to read about the works and find your way around the three locations (all less than 200 metres of the car park).

SITE GUIDE

EVENT 001 An exploration of consciousness and causality

Roger Bays

These works explore philosophical theories of mind and the nature of causality. Do we have an homunculus inside our heads? Is there a cartesian theatre of consciousness? Do we control reality, or does reality control us? If reality controls us does this mean the universe likes to draw and paint? Is the present influenced by the future?

WORKS

Location 1: at the pump house

DIRECTIONS: from the barricade walk southeast along the riverbank for 120m until you reach the large black pipes. On the pump house wall above the pipes you will see a photograph, and on the side wall a drawing.

What the Homunculi saw

What the Homunculi saw - photograph on 20”x30”

This work uses photography to explore the infinite regress issues surrounding the homunculus argument, which is a theory of vision. The homunculus argument supposes that inside our heads there is a Cartesian theatre, a kind of cinematic like display. The argument further suggests that there is also an observer, an homunculus, who is looking at the display. If this is so, then the obvious question is, how does the homunculus see the display? Would it not need a similar mechanism inside its head? This line of thinking leads to an infinite regress, an infinite number of Cartesian theatres and homunculi looking at them. The solution is fallacious because it reincorporates the never answered problem into the solution. But should we throw the baby (the theatre) out with the bathwater (the homunculus). Surely the infinite regress comes with the advent of an hypothesis of an homunculus, not the theatre. But this is a troubling proposition because an absence of an observer suggests an absence of a self! This photographic work does not answer these philosophical conundrums. But visually enables the art viewer to have a pseudo fly on the wall experience of what the hypothesized homunculi might see. This is achieved by superimposing a series of ever smaller replica photographs within a photograph, thus giving a regress. The photograph, taped to the pump house wall, is of the pump house. This enables the art viewer to stand at the location the photograph was taken and witness a transition from their own conscious experience of the pump house, to the photograph of the pump house, to a smaller image within the photograph of the pump house. . . etc.

The Banished Homunculus

The Banished Homunculus - graphite and coloured pencil on paper.

This work suggests that the homunculus, though disgruntled, has been banished from the mind.

Location 2: at the brown fence

DIRECTIONS: from the pump house, go through the iron gate, walk back along the road towards the car parking area, just before the car park turn left towards the portaloo, walk past the loo and head for the brown fence. Some drawings are on the fence and others are hanging in the trees.

Stream of consciousness drawings

Stream of consciousness drawings - graphite and coloured pencil on paper.

These works were all created by sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper with no particular plan on what to draw, and then following whatever instructions came to mind – draw a line here, use this pencil, start mark here, stop mark here, now draw line . . . We tend to believe that we are in control of our thoughts and are thereby responsible for them and any subsequent actions that might follow e.g. the movement of a pencil. However, the elephant in the room is the question, where do these thoughts come from? If we reflect on our thoughts, must we not concede that they just arrive in our conscious arena, one after the other, unbeknownst to us till the point of occurrence, conscious impact? Are we not in the situation where we are unaware of their origin and oblivious to mechanisms that cause their arrival? If this is the case, are we not at the mercy of what is delivered, and thereby victims of fate? If this is so, then surely we must forfeit any notion that we control reality, and succumb to the opposing, and maybe frightening, proposition that reality controls us. If reality/the universe is in charge, then why does it draw and paint?

Location 3: in the trees

DIRECTIONS: duck through the fence and wander amongst the trees until you find a laptop displaying an animation of a bobcat. The laptop will probably be on the ground.

Mammalian Experiences with Retrocausality

Mammalian Experiences with Retrocausality - digital animation.

This work utilises an animation to explore retrocausality. Retro causality is the controversial idea that the future can and does influence the present. Retrocausality, whether true or false, cannot easily be explored in a work without some form of device/sleight of hand. This work displays photographs in a shuffled order, giving the art viewer a sense of chronological mayhem, making it difficult to ascertain what preceded what. It is hoped that this temporal confusion makes the art viewer have doubts about causality, did (a) cause (b), or did (b) cause (a). Animated is a selection of six photographs of a bobcat –lynx rufus – in motion. These photographs were taken near Tucson, Arizona, USA, in May 2016.