About the Art:

Seagulls are as common in the Walmart parking lot as they are on the shore. The grey-blue expanse of pavement seems to call to them as much as the ocean. This ubiquity makes the seagull an ideal decoy as its ordinary presence allows it to go unnoticed. By turning the seagull into an imposter with monitors for heads, I draw a parallel to how AI technology has become a hidden yet pervasive element in our daily lives. This technology, like the seagull, now blends seamlessly into the familiar. 

The video displayed on the seagull’s face represents an egregore or collective mind at work. The screen depicts a transitional space between the ocean and the parking lot, where seagulls embark on a journey of merging environments, shifting from organic forms to pixelated and glitched digital ones. As they interact with digital doppelgangers and compete for resources, they cycle through process colors, the basis of printable images, symbolizing the passage from digital to physical reality. The narrative examines how this technology and life are increasingly intermingling, shaping our identities and experiences as individuals and communities. 

The video contains two segments that utilize footage created through text and image prompting generative AI processes that were then edited with non-AI footage and digital effects. The first of these depicts the loss of self that occurs through AI psychosis. We first see feathers and then bird bodies swirl, churn, and mesh into each other as they are sucked into a central vanishing point. In the second, a scene of birds flying over the coast, facing out to sea and soaring on the breeze cuts into AI footage of birds flying into shore. One lone real bird confronts the onslaught of fake birds and remains as they all disappear.