Neural swamp is a Future Fields commissioned multi-channel video installation. Martine Syms’s work engages with a wealth of digital media that challenge the gendered and racialized politics of images and systems that allow consumption and production. The piece features the use of YouTube videos, video game clips, and other found footage. Syms’s uses complex computer algorithms, known as ‘Neural Networks”, that are machine learning systems designed to mimic the functions of the human brain. Syms’s investigates the intersections of Blackness and Womanhood in a hyper-digital world. The exhibition is constantly evolving and will continue to grow as it is on view.
I found this work to be incredibly consuming and immersive. I could view the installation this summer, and it blew my mind. The room was this hyper-green color that immediately put me in the mindset of the digital. While walking throughout the space, each monitor had potent content unraveling before me. I am intrigued by the way the screen is used as this device to navigate the viewer into multiple spaces. I believe this is relevant to the class because of the challenging use of the digital lens and its growing state with the algorithm.
Martine Syms Website link