Location

McMahon Hall, DX Arts Gallery

Technical Details

Three channel video, computer-generated-text, images filmed/colored/edited by artist, mono-channel audio (mixed by artist).

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About the Project

The Phenomena of the Apology? is a phenomenological inquiry into the nature of the apology. A broken system becoming visible—calculating emotion, incoherently apologizing. The three-channel video installation questions what an apology is in a capitalist society. Is the apology a fleeting phenomenon? A manifestation of Guilt? Relief? Or freedom? Between three HD video channels, a conversation is created both in space and time. Wide shots of domestic environments ranging from suburban homes, offices, and streets, are juxtaposed with close-up shots of specific details in each scene on another screen. Above, seven fleeting apologies, co-authored with GPT-4, appear, writing themselves character by character and disappearing into the darkness of the gallery.

The images shown on screen are unmoving yet human, rejecting traditional notions of cinema. Each image is just long enough to be uncomfortable on its own, yet when put into the conversation, the questions posited are too many to be answered. Exploring the apology through location and absent-minded gaze lets connections between the temporal, contextual- spatial- moments and locations in time become visible. This project engages with the phenomenon of human apology by exploring detachment. Interacting with the piece, we examine the fleeting temporality of the apology—the context surrounding it—and a denial of closure. We never know what is being apologized for or to whom these apologies are meant to be delivered.

Feelings of isolation, nostalgia, and regret permeate the piece. Calling back to the original question—what is an apology? Is it an empty room filled with an air of regret? Here the question remains unanswered; an inherent boundary is, however, reached. The degradation of the apology into an unintelligible mass of code-calls, stolen text, and symbols evades our understanding. But yet, it is only here, when we see phrases of real apologies, lifted from online conversations by OpenAI, that we can begin to understand. The machine may co-opt the language of the apology; it may even be indistinguishable from the banal- the superficial- the avoidant- apologies we might give—yet it does not engage in the “richness of first-person experiences of forgiving and being forgiven,” a concept examined by Marguerite La Caze in Phenomenology and Forgiveness. The artificiality is inherent when juxtaposed with the real—the text image combinations further this complexity, creating opportunities for distant realities to emerge (described by Tom Konyves in Videopoetry: A Manifesto)- realities that oppose the real.

The loop continues onward, marching forward through time. Viewers may enter at any moment, encountering the writing out of phrases, empty screens, or otherwise unintelligible fragments of memory. Only by giving time and observing the system can things be decoded. Perhaps hazily, if you’re not in the know, you might not know. Viewers' projections onto the piece are largely determined by where they enter the loop. Rewatching the piece allows for the noticing of finer details between channels, uncovering more distant realities described by Konyves.

Complementing the piece are sections of Anisktet (The Face): Swindle And Deceit, performed by Erik Nordgren and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. This music, originally created for the 1958 film The Magician, directed by Ingmar Bergman, calls subtly back to the underlying themes of this piece. The struggle between the cold, rational forces of science, represented by Doctor Vergerus, and the artistic, imaginative forces, represented by the magician Vogler. Volger, described by Olivier Assayas—is a mute illusionist who’s lost his faith in his power and knows only how to perpetuate appearances. His conflict in the film, his decision to disguise himself as mute, and the conflict between analysis and emotion harken here. These apologies were never spoken; they were never real. The apologies manifested out of the ether- the digital sublime- webs of prediction networks and language models- to conjure images of events that never happened.