How do we manifest our way out of boring futures (and boring art)?
How do we manifest our way out of boring futures (and boring art)?
Reflections on the catalytic potential of Brandon Tay's strange objects
"Something strange is arriving … let’s just see where it goes.”
Brandon Tay’s inaugural solo exhibition at Yeo Workshop Form & Agency presented five unique 3D-printed relics or artefacts, each embedded with their own engine and mythological premises. These objects were manifested as emancipatory catalysts for dissolving the limitations we place on epistemology (knowledge), taking us into an interminable space where ideas regenerate and subsume one another; unearthing new pathways towards social transformation and innovativeness.
All your futures are already in some form figured and presented. So why are you picking the future that is the most boring?
Brandon Tay in conversation with Bogna Konior, ‘Let the outside in’
I endeavour to write about Form and Agency because I had a hunch that I would enjoy navigating the proverbial hornets nest of ideas circulating around the exhibition and its object-objectives, and also because I wanted to participate (however peripherally) in the generative system of engagement that Brandon was seeking to invite through the work. Substantiating the aspiration that perhaps each thing would be eventually able to spawn its own mythos and stimulate some form of distributed authorship or idea exchange.
I remember an early vestige of the show that I saw floating around on social media, a poster resembling an occult schematic, dense with alien symbology and populated with text typeset in unusual letterforms (a custom alphabet designed by Darius Ou for the show). The work is a speculative timeline that tracks the history of ‘Synchrocognition’, which I believe is a Brandon word, short for cognitive synchronicity - referring to the non-causal relations between things. The poster contains some pretty obscure references and reveals some of the show’s thematics, mapping the divinatory Oracle Bone Script and even Heikeji 黑科技 (Black Science or Black Technology) characteristic of the Brandon lexicon. This esoteric diagram offers a loose framing for recognizing the validity of these spiritual and technological phenomena as legitimate sources of intelligence, akin to how ancient tribes operated based on the circadian rhythms of the world rather than relying on clocks or watches. This hermetic piece of data-visualization was what compelled me trek out to Gilman Barracks to see for myself what secrets it was hiding.
“Agency is not something can be defined from the system that it emerges”
Brandon Tay, Forms and Agencies with Brandon Tay and Bogna Konior (Artist Talk - (M)across Cultures #3)
The poster, mounted on dibond1 , although elegantly constructed and representative of the matrix of possibilities embedded within and across the show, ended up being the most static thing in it. Not because of the printed medium, but more for its transportive potential (or lack thereof). I somehow wish its material properties had been leveraged more, to really give a sense of world. As a graphic designer by trade, the finite nature of the printed surface has always been my material reality and sadly, sometimes it remains staunchly as such. That being said, perhaps the work’s inertness lies is that there was only one. If there had been additional ephemera to enrich the lore, it might have felt less opaque. I also felt that its dimensions were too modest. It would have been incredible to see this at wall-size, rife with trivia and pseudo-mystical encryptions. I am a lover of excess, which I guess brings me back to my previous appeal … that I wish there had been more of everything. I’ll admit that this desire might be spurred by my own awareness that what we are privy to here is but a millifraction of the sophisticated circuitry of ideas that populates Brandon’s psyche and artistic interests.
Apart from the poster print, the artist and curatorial team have also released a substantial amount of written material in conjunction with the show, providing both aesthetic and philosophical perspectives in which one can enter the work. Never have I seen a show in Singapore so profligate or diligent in its contextualization, but I find this to be prudent, as Brandon’s work is not always easy for the casual observer, not if you want to really get it. Plus, its fun to do the homework.
For a formal analysis of the objects, you can read Rafi Abdullah’s curatorial text here or dive into the exhibition microsite to mire yourself in Brandon’s own AI-assisted lore as an addendum to the work. The inclusion of lore is vital as it ensures that we don't overly fixate on the meaning of the work and promotes a more tongue-in-cheek/hyperbolic approach. It also could potentially incentivize collective storytelling and facilitate the inclusion of other conspirators in future iterations. There is also an accompanying Wiki that is in the early stages of being populated.
In my own conversations with Brandon, he referred to these objects as action models. By action I’m assuming he means actionable (to respond to) or something that carries movement (activity; to activate). Every object operates as a portal, they have been designed by the artist to operate as dynamic agents — a series of speculative models primed for provoking fresh lines of thought and unlocking new potentialities. This also makes me think about the rhizomatic trajectory of ideas and how those exchanges of energy is in itself a type of liveness or animating force. I perceive them as not quite animal but animistic accelerations, organic drivers for latencies waiting to burst forth. The active potential of the work is contained at the precipice of this imminence.
In the show, each entity is embedded with its own dynamic media loop of randomly generated GIFS containing shifting replicas of their visages, created from a generative AI. Every loop changes by the hour, giving the works an inhuman vitality, an irregular heartbeat. The video interface is what imbues the object with semangat (soul/spirit) or stored velocity. The implications of this gesture have been explored within domain of popular culture through franchises like Ghost in the Shell, Bladerunner or many cyborgian narratives wherein automatons can manifest or grapple with their own ghosts or interiority.
At first, I wondered why none of the objects incorporated an adaptive AI engine, a feature that could enhance their responsiveness and highlight the notion of sentience. However, it seems like Brandon's interest extends beyond the complexities of AI to encompass other forms of "automaticity". The closed loops embedded within the objects were inspired by early automata like cuckoo clocks, computing devices that work outside of time. He seems intrigued also by simple automation, which adheres to a single governing law, devoid of relational aspects, whose steadfast singularity can be seen as a form of refusal to operate within the quantitative constraints of linear time and processual thought.
The philosophical or conceptual themes of Form and Agengy are what truly excite me, so I will leave the close reading of the objects to Rafi as I write in pursuit of the big-picture ideas propagating the show. What is most stimulating for me (of all the reading material provided) is an interview conversation 'Let the outside in', between Brandon and writer/media-art professor Bogna Konior (BK) who also contributed the exhibition text. Bogna’s perspectives on AI and technology add layers of nuance and in dialogue, she serves as a valuable sounding board for Brandon’s post-human speculations. Bogna describes the objects as ‘black boxes where exact meaning is obscured2’ but wherein ‘an aggressive potency remains3.’ Her observation makes me recall Brandon’s own classification of some or one of the objects as puzzle boxes. The puzzle box being a fictional lock puzzle or cursed object that appears in the Hellraiser horror franchise, a mystical/mechanical device that acts as a door — or key — to another dimension full of untold ecstasies and sufferings. I like this depiction, as Brandon’s objects are detonative and charged by design, skyrocketing us into larger constellations of ideas as we unpack them.
It's about embracing uncertainty of the outcome rather than thinking that we know where we will end up. One thing that I found very useful in trying to devise methods for embracing the unknown was studying how scientists dealt with phenomena that were conceptually challenging to the whole established epistemological framework upon their discovery, such as black holes.
Brandon Tay in conversation with Bogna Konior, ‘Let the outside in’
The melding of biological and computational properties gives these proto-hybrids their distinctly extraterrestrial quality and also reveals some of Brandon’s experience with designing game environments and digital artwork which I think has a large influence on his overall aesthetic and colour sensibility. As contradictory objects, the 3D-printed sculptures entreat us to consider the complex metaphysics of human-machine dichotomies. Their cyber-paganistic appearance also serves to titillate the speculative imagination, propelling us into a future where these worlds can continue projecting themselves. The objects in their glossy strangeness, contest the anthropocentric belief that all meaning in this world originates from human cognition or natural systems by taking the non-casual logic of computational processes as a paradigm for creativity. The premise of Form and Agency is simple, how do we embrace the unknown? Perhaps the computers know better.
In the curatorial text Form Follows Fiction, Rafi cites ways in which fiction has influenced the appearance of form across history. Brandon’s weird objects are formally shaped by the fictionalized narratives that underpin them and vice-versa. These fictions are not only techno-dystopic but can also be in the form of the occult or supernatural, things that don’t make sense to the rational mind. There is an intention here that the objects intimate a speculative future where “AI models can (could) conjure their own being”, manifesting their own latencies in which humans can take on the role of stewards (?), custodians or accomplices. Brandon says that the the cultural fictions that we make about technologies also influence too much the decisions about technologies that we make in real life and that perhaps we are being too cautionary in our approach. He suggests that by not dismissing but taking better ownership of or engaging with these dangerous or disruptive technologies, we might be able to counteract corporatist monopolies and create new futures for ourselves (and a way out of them as well). Embracing the unknown releases its potential, but requires the labor of negotiating the apocalyptic or moral scenarios that come along with it. This is agency I think, how we choose to define our place.
Brandon also makes the argument that AI communicates in a manner distinct from human comprehension, but that this doesn't invalidate its significance. His models aim to blur distinctions and prompt shifts in perspective in an "era of post-AI language meltdown4," encouraging an exploration of alternative approaches to meaning, abandoning causal logics altogether. Form and Agency posits that language is not a reliable carrier of meaning, if we are still operating within the bounds of reason and assigned definitions as understood through ‘the word’, we will not know anything outside of it. Through the works, the underlying question here is how can something define its own agency outside its own context?
But for me, language is not yet proven to be human. Where does language come from? William S. Burroughs put forth the idea of language as a virus from outer space. Or, there is the theory of memetics that tells us that language and concepts are like parasites battling for human brains as fertile grounds through which they can reproduce themselves. Humans might be just a phase in the history of language, or the history of processing information, or the history of communication.
Bogna Kornior in conversation with Brandon Tay, ‘Let the outside in’
Aside from the objects, Brandon has also created a game simulation generated via the Unity game engine that serves as a digital enclosure or habitat for the five entities that lives as a projected ecosystem in the gallery. The forms move in accordance with their own whims, engaging in all sorts of interactions from animalistic to comic. In this world they are alive and most importantly ‘free’. Thus, if we permit ourselves to explore the realms of imagination and fiction as potentially valid realities, everything becomes plausible, and therein lies the agentic power of the virtual.
One might draw comparisons from the simulation to Ian Cheng’s BOB(Bag of Beliefs), an AI model manifested as a serpentine entity that could be fed stimuli via an app called the “BOB Shrine”. The model exercised its agency by reacting to new sensory input that it was exposed to in real time.
However this parallel makes me realize that Brandon is not trying to cultivate the sentience of his objects as one would nurture an organic life-form. He is forcing us to make the cognitive leap ourselves without any real corroboration of consciousness. Perhaps another form of agency could be achieved through the assignment of a more basic function, you exist outside of the demands of complex evolution. I wonder if the mysteries prompted by Brandon’s horcruxes are meant to be actively pursued or left to run amok as cognitive loop-de-loops. For now I am content to enjoy my unfettered nomadism across the proliferating realm of subjectivities provoked by these objects.
Brandon’s object-oriented potentialities are definitely more provocateur than altruistic but still, is this too optimistic of a proposition? Even as I forge ahead in my own artistic undertakings with adjacent impulses, I cannot quite quell my cynicism. Can we really nurture or engender a radical open-endedness through art and who is going to care? As an artist myself, I am often plagued with the conundrum of how do we effectively cultivate receptivity and more importantly, how do we sustain it? I think my answer (at this very instance) is to just make more art, in as many ways possible.
This project also evokes fond memories of Walid Raad’s "The Atlas Group," an artistic project that I love very much that unfolded between 1989 and 2004 — a fictional collective comprising of artists, researchers, and archivists that delved into Lebanon's contemporary history by blending both fabricated documents and real archival material. My encounter with a museum survey of the "The Atlas Group's" creations at the MoMA in 2015-2016 was a complete revelation. The disorienting breadth of the material which spanned photographs, videos, installations, and texts and the way he wielded the politics of the imaginary were influential forces that would shape my artistic method for years to come.
The best thing about this series of models in Form and Agency is that each object could be easily expanded into a larger event. I am actually hungry for more exposition; ravenous for a thorough examination and honing in of each individual world at a more detailed level, but perhaps the impetus for presenting different models together is to encourage a non-linear mapping of disparate information. The abstraction of meaning and reduction of information can also provoke more speculative scenarios. That being said, I can’t wait for Brandon to reveal a more elaborate taxonomy and maybe supplement his narratives. I’m excited for additional artefacts pertaining to the Age of Collapse, the Cyborg Theocracy and from the annals of the Pre-history of Intelligence —made-up epochs by the artist that come across as both humorous and poetic.
During my visit, I ask Brandon about the inscrutability of the works … does it bother him that its not quite accessible to say, the layman. Without batting an eye he says “everybody loves a puzzle” and I laugh because nobody loves a puzzle more than Brandon himself.
Brandon Tay: Form & Agency
26 August — 1 October 2023
Yeo Workshop, Singapore
Curated by Rafi Abdullah
Graphic design: Studio Darius Ou
Exhibition design: Amirul Nazree
Website build: Bao Anh Bui
Exhibition Support: Charmaine Kok, Nuhayd Naufal, Kyara Devaser, Nghia Phung
Exhibition Photography: Jonathan Tan
Dibond is a type of aluminium material