In my work, SuperPOD0043: An American Painting, which was recently selected to be exhibited at the Dallas Contemporary for their inaugural North Texas Graduate Student program, takes the advanced AI technology housed in SMU’s NVIDIA SuperPOD — a tool of immense computational power, designed for research, innovation, and perhaps the unseen hand of defense contracts. But instead of optimizing weapon systems or predictive AI models, I provoke the system to re-imagine George W. Bush painting in the style of Joan Miró — an absurd, yet revealing gesture to the peculiar ties across the SMU campus.

The grand ideals of art, politics, and technology are tangled within reality. Elements of the image are generated by AI, digitally collaged, painted by the hand of an anonymous Chinese painter, and propped on an easel that once belonged to the Western artist Joe Grande. Each layer of the piece — human, machine, contract — reflects the contradictions embedded in this place of Art, America, Dallas, and SMU.

More Details