Anicka Yi §†£R†§ñ, 2023

The first iteration in a new horizontal format, §†£R†§ñ is a unique painting that is UV printed using imagery generated through a custom-made machine learning model. The sculptural facet of the painting is made by milling the acrylic surface. The painting has an almost holographic effect, its appearance shifts slightly as one moves. Photography cannot properly document this effect.

The imagery was generated by the artist working in dialogue with several machine-learning algorithms, deconstructing and manipulating her past work to prompt and guide the algorithms in unexpected directions. Each of these models started from the original “Anicka Yi” model, but then evolved in new directions by mixing in a profusion of novel imagery from algae, bacteria, and fungi, tissues and cells, flora and fauna, machines and electronics, paint strokes and fluid media, geological formations, and landscapes (aquatic, terrestrial, and cosmic). Yi conceptualized this process as hybridizing her own visual patterns and motifs (her visual “DNA”) with those of other ecological entities, living and non-living alike.

Each new machine learning algorithm created by Yi functions as a layer of “paint” and generates unique imagery, from brush strokes and washes of color, to blood cells and fish eggs, scratched and ruptured skin, clumps of algae, polyps and crustaceans, and the undulations of a deep ocean floor. Drawing from this abundant pool of unique imagery, Yi digitally collages the visuals to create an illusion of depth, layering foreground, middle ground, and background to synthesize the final digital painting.

While the images created in this process are at once figurative (referencing real-world objects) and abstract (not reflecting visual reality, but instead concerned with pattern, form, color, shape, etc.), the new series of paintings retains more expressly figurative references to the materials the artist employed to teach the machine learning algorithms.

The final physical painting is created by playing with layers of light reflection, distortion, transparency, and color to create an almost holographic effect. Yi’s intention was for the illuminated surface of the paintings to evoke an electric alien ocean, where optical physics are scrambled, reflections and shadow become illusory, and light flickers over the pale screen of a machine consciousness.

Painting is a relatively new part of Anicka Yi’s practice. Following her early experiments with “soap paintings” in 2013–15, the artist renewed her investigation into painting and imagemaking during 2020. Continuing a trajectory in her oeuvre that explores the concept of “biologizing the machine” (Venice Biennale 2019, In Love With The World at Tate Modern 2021, Metaspore at Pirelli HangarBicocca 2022), Yi wanted to interrogate painting’s mythical associations with individual authorship and the physical body of the painter, exploring how machine intelligence might affect the evolution of painting.