G.O.D. is a generative non-interactive – yet infinite – cinematic and hypnotic installation, triggered by a call for participation under the general title of "Vision of God".
Artistic depictions of God in the Western Christian tradition are mostly connected to vision and, because figurative depictions essentially refer to corporeal entities, the triadic nature of God – Father, Son and Holy Ghost – has challenged this approach. Hence some artists chose to depict God's hand or God's all-seeing eye.
G.O.D. | Generative Ominous Dataset is the author's convergent interpretation and rendition of a (carefully curated and rather appropriate) "triad" of key concepts.
Data = God
Recent advances in Generative Adversarial Networks and Natural Language Processing brought to the public eye, with unprecedented popularity, Artificial Intelligence systems capable of generating both text and images from interactive user prompts. However, the vast – and mostly unauthorised – datasets used to train the AIs are the key to their success. Behind the hype, Big Data is feverishly collecting ever-expanding amounts of user information, for consumerist and control purposes alike. Thus, the "All Seeing Eye" appears as a relevant metaphor for "DATA as GOD".
Ominous Dataset
The dataset used by G.O.D. consists of images retrieved from the Internet in a similar way to modern AI systems: disregarding any potential copyright infringements, in a classic – yet questionable – claim that the end justifies the means. All the images depict situations of violence, war, destruction, conflict, harassment, cruelty, street protests, violent repression and natural disasters. However, unlike the datasets used by AI systems, G.O.D. profoundly altered the source images and rendered them unrecognisable before using them to depict God's (and G.O.D.'s) Radiance and Revelations.
Generative epiphany
G.O.D. delivers infinite, radiant bursts of generative enlightenment, without any repetitions, like surges of hypnotic epiphanies, combining symmetry and chaos in the aesthetic revelations. As a generative installation, during run-time G.O.D. delivers an infinite stream of never-repeating patterns; one could define the G.O.D. experience as an infinite succession of epiphanies, almost "an aesthetic rapture", a sensory flood by the divine.
Full development Veiga (2023), Generative Ominous Dataset: Testing the current public perception of generative art · DOI ↗ · Open access ↗
