Shortcuts are fast leaps across information scaffolds; cartridges for accelerated time. Shortcuts imply lower costs, since they train us to become beings who are not used to staying still, pondering, or meandering. Shortcuts symbolise strategic success, and energy-saving efficiency. But in the year 2020a time of global uncertaintywe gained a new perspective on what we shortcut into. The lesson is that perhaps we need to rethink our priorities, and develop an alternative blueprint that does not prioritize shortcuts. The exhibition The Long Cut features works that investigate the remote, latent, and liminal space of technologies, and how this awareness can trigger alternative pathways and maps for our shared technological reality. More importantly, it investigates how artists find their own way of living with the hybridity of the physical and the digital. Iris Long

Feral File  The Long Cut

He Zike&rsquo;s &ldquo;E-dream: We&rsquo;ll stay, forever, in this way (2020 selected)&rdquo; can be seen as a connecting portal between the real and the simulated. This real-time website hosts an intelligent program that constantly adapts stories written and broadcasted by the media. Information is then processed into dialogue which creates a fragmented story between Jack and Rose&mdash;the two protagonists of the site, whose interview with the media will never end.

This work is made possible by a deep learning algorithm that follows a set of rules. While dramatically playing text from mainstream English international news, it simultaneously translates the results, and searches for associated sounds and images on Chinese websites. As a result, the original meaning of the news gradually dispels, transforming from documentary records into ambiguous narratives. Over time, the content of the piece varies due to current events and changes in the media world.

The program has been running online since 2018, and this special video edition was created from hundreds of thousands of results in 2020.

  :  2020  Jack  Rose   

  

20182020