Baden Pailthorpe
Something you know, something you have, something you are (2023)
Digital animation, 5m x 5m LED wall, 3 mins 33 sec
Commissioned by the ACT government for Uncharted Territory, 7 – 16 July, 2023
Cyber-attacks have become an everyday occurrence, with several high-profile hacks targeting the private information of millions of Australians. Yet the ‘space’ of cyberspace is difficult for the public to understand. Metaphors such as ‘the cloud’ obscure the massive infrastructure, physicality and materiality of the digital systems we all rely on. Cybercrime itself, whilst often devastating for victims, often operates in extraordinarily banal ways – a text message, an email, a phone call. This artwork develops a new visual and spatial language to understand cyber security through passwords, cyber-attack data and biometrics, displayed on a large LED wall at Kambri, ANU.
With special thanks to the ANU Cybersecurity team & Macquarie Technology.
Procedural/Portrait
8 mins 33 seconds / 6-channel digital video, 1920 x 6840 pixels. Installation view, Lyon Housemuseum Galleries, Melbourne, 2019
Credits: James Peter Brown (Composer)
Antoine Roille (Programmer)
Supported by: Lyon Foundation, Sullivan+Strumpf
Procedural/Portrait is a 6-channel animation ‘portrait’ of the Housemuseum Galleries, a newly built private museum in Melbourne, Australia. This artwork was commissioned on the occasion of it's inagrual exhibition, 'ENTER'.
Using the museum’s 3D architectural models, Pailthorpe plays with digital patterns that disrupt, expand and collapse the gallery spaces as they float over a simulated version of the Western Victorian Volcanic Plains, the ancient source of the Housemuseum's Bluestone material.
Ngapulara Ngarngarnyi Wirra (2022) is the outcome of a collaborative and practice-led Indigenous Data Sovereignty project that digitally returned a sample of Adam Goodes’ biometric AFL data to Adnyamathanha Country (northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia) via Adam’s matrilineal kinship system. This artwork was the first experiment in a long-term partnership between Adam Goodes and Baden Pailthorpe that commenced in 2017, following Baden’s AFL data artwork Clanger. New data artworks by Adam and Baden are currently under development.
This artwork was originally commissioned by MOD with ongoing support from the Australian National University, Canberra. Ngapulara Ngarngarnyi Wirra was first exhibited at MOD, Adelaide & Science Gallery Melbourne (both 2022).
Selected Press/Interviews:
Multimedia Installation: External space: 2 x synchronised 4k projections, 4-channel audio surround sound. Screen dimensions: 5120 (h) x 3200 (w) mm Digital files: 2 x mp4 video files (3840 x 2160p) with unique video and stereo audio tracks (representing Ararru & Mathari (North & South)). Internal space: 2 x synchronised HD videos, stereo sound, and wall text. Digital files: 2 x mp4 video files (1920 x 1080p) with the same stereo audio track (representing Ararru & Mathari (North & South)).
With thanks to the Adnyamathanha Yarta, Adnyamathanha Elders and ngarngarnyi (families) for sharing, teaching and providing guidance with the Yura Muda and Yura Ngawarla.
Aunty Glenise Coulthard AM (Arraru)
Uncle Terrence Coulthard (Mathari)
Uncle Kinglsey Coulthard (Mathari)
Kristian Coulthard (Arraru)
Umeewarra Media Radio Station, Port Augusta
Ngapulara Ngarngarnyi Wirra (Our Family Tree), 2022 (External projection, showing East and West together)
Standing at back from left: Winnie Coulthard with daughter Eileen, Jessie McKenzie, Kitty Elliott holding baby son Tom (small girl standing in front of them is probably daughter Lorna), Annie Ryan, Susy Wilton holding son Rufus, Alice Coulthard holding daughter Dulcie, Pollie McKenzie, Nellie Driver, Lucy (Frome Charlie’s wife), Emily Demell, Sissy James and Frelling Judy. Men in front from left: Peter Frying Pan, Cranky Jack and Milky Billy. Children in front from left after men: Walter Coulthard, Richard Coulthard, May Wilton and Claude Demell. 8364 Courtesy State Records Office SA.
Baden Pailthorpe's 2017 exhibition Pitch Deck combines elements of high quality 3D animation, custom gaming PCs, liquid cooling, roman armour, web scrapers, champagne and startup chic.
A 'pitch deck' is a visual presentation to provide a brief business plan overview to potential investors, partners and customers. Pailthorpe's Pitch Deck is formed around a real company, Petricore Pty Ltd., who borrow key principles of conceptual art – privileging concepts over material form and challenging conventions of artwork authorship. This new body of work explores the potential application of financial analysis and machine learning in contemporary art, and is conceived as a pitch to potential investors in a business based on cultural capital.
Pailthorpe's title work, a major new 3D animation, serves as an expanded moving image pitch whose artificially intelligent narrator outlines Petricore’s vision for an art world inoculated against the risks of art world participation. Alongside this major new work, are three new digital sculptures; Padding, Helmet and Incubator, that display speculative merchandise and environments to accompany the central startup pitch.
In the algorithmically intense stages of late-capitalism, after the supposed death of the avant garde, Pitch Deck asks us to consider whether today’s aesthetic and conceptual innovators have been absorbed by incubators rather than studios, funded by the interests of venture capitalists rather than patrons.
COLLECTIONS
Private collections
EXHIBITED
2018
Kuiper Projects, Brisbane
Move on Asia 2018: Digital Art in a Post-Digital Asia, Alternative Space Loop & Daegu Art Factory, Seoul, South Korea.
2017
Sullivan+Strumpf, Singapore.
Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney, Australia.
In Asset Pack, 2019, Baden Pailthorpe intensifies his examination of the cultures of late capitalism by reinterpreting the material culture of digital marketplaces. An asset can be any element of a digital program – including 2D and 3D models, sound effects, code or templates, and even complete projects that can be used by software platforms such as smartphone applications or video games. These assets or asset packs can be bought and sold by creators and make up a significant part of the digital economy.
Bringing together a series of real-time animations, computer sculptures, physical textures, speculative objects and a large-scale light installation, this exhibition greatly expands Pailthorpe’s practice to-date. The generative animations depict a series of readymade collections of virtual objects, programmed with spatially intelligent algorithms, whilst a series of extreme computer sculptures blur the boundaries of aesthetic experience and functionality. Through these artworks, Pailthorpe unites a collection of physical and virtual assets that together create new systems of meaning. In doing so, he recontextualises these objects and redefines their potential as artefacts of our contemporary moment.
PC builds: Stuart Tonks, GGF LAN Party
Supported by: InWin + Thermaltake
Unreal Engine asset pack, found photogrammetry 4K Ultra HD real-time animation. Ed 3 + 2AP
Unreal Engine plants asset pack, 4K Ultra HD real-time animation. Ed 3 + 2AP
Unreal Engine weapons asset pack, 4K Ultra HD real-time animation. Ed 3 + 2AP
Unreal Engine dragons asset pack, 4K Ultra HD real-time animation. Ed 3 + 2AP
Thermaltake Riing Duo LED Case Fans, various electronics, custom steel armature, 2019. 66 x 53 x 11 cm. Ed 4 + 1AP
Thermaltake Riing Duo LED Case Fans, various electronics, custom steel armature, 2019. 66 x 53 x 11 cm. Ed 4 + 1AP
, Thermaltake Riing Duo LED Case Fans, various electronics, custom steel armature, 2019. 66 x 53 x 11 cm. Ed 4 + 1AP
Thermaltake Riing Duo LED Case Fans, various electronics, custom steel armature, 2019. 66 x 53 x 11 cm. Ed 4 + 1AP
One and Three PCs, 2019
Digital imagery produced by a DCGAN machine learning algorithm, various LED screens, InWin Z Tower, Threadripper 2970WX, ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha, G.Skill Trident Z RGB 64GB, 2 x AMD Radeon VII, 2 x WD Black 1TB NVMe, ASUS ROG Thor 1200W Platinum, Thermaltake Riing Trio, CableMod Pro Sleeved Cables, Custom 7″ screen (running Aida64)
PC build: Stuart Tonks, GGF LAN Party
AI assistance: Dr Charles Gretton, ANU; Kieran Browne, ANU
Network architecture by Radford et al., 2015.
Code: https://github.com/gsurma/image_generator
Supported by: InWin
Baden Pailthorpe's One and Three PCs (2019) is a computational installation comprised of the world's most beautiful computer attempting to produce and recognise an image of itself. Using a form of image generating AI called a Deep Convolutional General Adversarial Network (DCGAN), this installation playfully calls into question the meaning of language, symbols and imagery in the context of machine intelligence.
Produced for The Invisible Hand, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney
Clanger, a solo exhibition at UTS Art, Sydney, explores the aesthetics of power through data, bodies and technology. In an environment that is both physical and virtual, Clanger pairs the statistical tracking of AFL player performance with the emotional intensities of the crowd.
Using anonymous player and crowd data captured during the 2017 AFL Round 23 Swans v Carlton game, Clanger re-stages the drama and flow of a match in its entirety. Pailthorpe moves the game from the field to the virtual plane, rendering both players and the crowd as data-borne creations caught in a deeply emotional, cultural and aesthetic tradition.
In statistical terms, the word ‘Clanger’ refers to a turnover or a silly mistake made by a player in an AFL match. The criteria for each player’s usefulness is defined wholly by the data they generate during the game— AFL players are tracked using micro wearable units that include GPS and accelerometers. The amount of data generated from these devices in a given game is immense; every movement is tracked, stored and interpreted in an effort to understand performance, mitigate injury and measure value.
By adopting the vernaculars of sport and gaming, the artist creates an immersive environment that emphasises the role of experience in the propagation of labour, culture, and ideas. A new 36-channel video work re-articulates the match using the two team’s GPS data, while a single-channel video work on the opposing end of the gallery/field renders the crowd via audio data captured at the game. A soundtrack by composer James Brown accompanies this work. By pairing the compelling languages of creative practice with the statistics of player performance, Pailthorpe’s Clanger demonstrates that data becomes information only by interpretation.
Clanger results from Pailthorpe’s Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) 2017 Synapse Artist Residency with UTS Sport and Exercise Science and professor Aaron Coutts. The exhibition is supported by a catalogue essay by Dr Dan Golding, lecturer in Media and Communications at Swinburne University of Technology; co-author of Game Changers: From Minecraft to Misogyny, The Fight for the Future of Videogames (Affirm Press, 2016).
Read the full text of “The Rules of The Crowd” by Dan Golding here.
Photos: Jessica Maurer
(L-R) Deb Verhoeven, Louise Stephenson, Baden Pailthorpe, Adam Goodes, Kim Vincs, Aaron Coutts, Clanger panel discussion, UTS.
Alt-Right Arabesque
2016
960 x 960 pixels, 3 mins
Ed. 5 + 2 AP.
Composer: James Brown
COLLECTIONS
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne
Private Collections
EXHIBITED
2016
Ramsay Art Prize, Art Gallery of South Australia
F-35 (Seaquest), 2015
HD 3D animation, color, sound
Edition of 5 + 2AP
MQ-9 Reaper I - III
2014 - 2016
COLLECTIONS
Australian Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Bathurst
UQ Art Museum, Brisbane
Private collections
Cadence (series)
2013
HD video, colour, stereo sound, 4 mins / 6 mins.
Edition of 5 + 2 AP.
COLLECTIONS
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (All)
Australian War Memorial (Cadence I)
Newcastle Art Gallery (Cadence II-IV)
Private Collections (All)
EXHIBITED
2017
A Broken Link, Golden Age Cinema, Sydney & Central St. Martins, London.
Red Green Blue: A History of Australian Video Art, Grifith University Art Gallery, Brisbane.
2016
GAME/ART VIDEO, Triennale di Milano, Italy.
2015
Theatres, Perth International Arts Festival, Museum of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
Guarding the Home Front, Casula Powerhouse, Liverpool, Australia.
2014
Hors Pistes, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.
Cadence, Westspace, Melbourne, Australia.
2013
Cadence, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney, Australia.
Permanent Collection, The Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia.
New Atlantis, km temporaer, Berlin, Germany. Curated by Elisa R Linn / Lennart Wolff.
Spatial Operations
2015
210 paper helmets created from each book on the Australian Chief of Army's Reading List.
PVA, cellulose powder, paper pulp. 24.0 x 30.0 x 22.0cm (each), 210 pieces
COLLECTIONS
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Private Collections
EXHIBITED
2016
Sappers and Shrapnel, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
2015
Spatial Operations, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney.
Spatial Operations, Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle.
2014
Students of War, Centre Pompidou, Paris (performance)
Eighty-Four Doors (2012), authored book, 165 pages, ISBN 9780987251602.
Topos (2012), Giclée print on archival paper (200 cm x 100 cm).
Lingua Franca (2012), Two channel projection on paper, projection mapping software, colour sound, 4:3. 3 minutes 26 seconds. Unique work + 1 AP. Private Collection.
An experimental literary work derived from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Eighty-Four Doors is the result of an extended process of linguistic remixing—hundreds of translations and retranslations using Google’s online statistical translation machine, Google Translate. Each paragraph of Orwell’s book was individually translated back and forth through every language on Google Translate (some 58 languages at the time of production), before being returned to English. At each stage in the process, the ‘voices’ of Google’s algorithms become more and more present in the translations. Words are omitted, the syntax is rearranged and new words are added. Indeed, a machinic sub-language rapidly emerges, emancipated from the confines of its interface.
Google Translate employs a method called Statistical Machine Translation. For a translation to be executed, there must be an existing copy of it (or a similar translation) in Google’s vast databases. If a translation doesn’t exist already—between, for example, less common languages such as Armenian and Tamil—Google uses English as a ‘pivot language’, which acts as a linguistic bridge between the two. In this case, Armenian would be translated into English, and then into Tamil. None of this is visible to the user.
English is omnipresent throughout many of Google’s translations. This use of a lingua franca adds semiotic layers to the already complex task of translation. If used as intended, for short phrases and sayings, errors can be kept at a minimum. Yet if this machine is pushed to its limits, such as translating an 80,000-word novel, extremely interesting results are produced. The political power of language—and in particular translation— is something that Orwell himself strongly referred to in Nineteen EightyFour. The strange poetry of Google’s code and the beauty of mistakes offer a glimpse into the true voice of the machine. In the age of software, code is the contemporary lingua franca.
The Lingua Franca exhibition was assisted by the Australian Government through its arts funding and advisory body, the Australia Council.
Hibberd, Lily. ‘The Speaking System’. Lingua Franca Catalogue Essays. Sydney: Firstdraft Gallery, 2012, pp. 9-14.
Parikka, Jussi. ‘Statistical Machine Art’. Lingua Franca Catalogue Essays. Sydney: Firstdraft Gallery, 2012, pp. 2-8