Ben Bogart

Ben Bogart’s video installation Watching (2001: A Space Odyssey) offers an intricate interaction with Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. This interaction takes the form of an active watching in which the image and sound of the original film are disassembled and then reconstituted using complex algorithms embedded in statistically oriented machine learning and computer vision programs.

The reconstituted film is strangely familiar but the space and time that it describes is ordered in a new and compelling way. Those who have seen Kubrick’s version may struggle to reconcile the old with the new, but the reward comes in surrendering one’s preconceptions, and watching closely the pattern, movement and sounds rendered by Bogart’s artificial intelligence.

In this unexpected way, we are offered the surprising opportunity to witness an artificial intelligence “watching” a film, which is itself a study of artificial intelligence, consciousness and perception, across space and time.

Ben Bogart, Watching (2001: A Space Odyssey) (excerpts), 2018, HD video, Courtesy of the Artist