While the name of this exhibition might conjure up images of fluffy white shapes in the sky, the focus here is something more cutting edge, with the clouds of the title referring to cloud computing.
Amongst the clouds (digital materialities in the 21st century), to use its full name, is an exhibition by six pioneering multimedia artists exploring ways in which digital realms intersect with the physical world.
The artists hail from Australia, Canada, China, Germany and India – an international exploration of the brave new world of AI, CGI, social media, cloud computing and other digital technologies.
It is an immersive exhibition in which the viewer not only observes the art but interacts with it.
On entry, you find yourself in a very dark room. After a period of adjustment, you see that you’re surrounded by ‘curtains’ of punch-cards, made of plastic and cardboard.
This is Weaving Light by Indian artist Archana Hande. The swathes of punch cards, based on handloom programming patterns invented by French designer Joseph Marie Jacquard, are lit up briefly and sequentially by lights on timers.
The work evokes a period when the analogue world met the digital; punch cards were once the primary means of data input for computer systems, before the widespread adoption of graphical user interfaces.
Heading further into the exhibition, we encounter Guanyin (Confessions of a Former Carebot) by German-born, London-based Lawrence Lek in the next room.
This is a multimedia artwork of video and sound, which includes a video game running on a Windows 11 gaming computer.
The game revolves around a cyborg named after the female bodhisattva Guanyin (‘the one who listens’), whose purpose is to save other AI entities from destruction.
It’s an interesting concept but the work could have been exhibited more effectively.
While directions for controlling the thumbstick (and therefore Guanyin) are displayed onscreen, the room’s darkness make it impossible to read the inscriptions on said thumbstick. This means it is difficult to control Guanyin and play the game.
Next up is the fascinating audiovisual piece Robot // Dog by Sydney artist Sophie Penkethman-Young. This work is a standout of the exhibition.
Via a five-channel video installation and headphones, Robot // Dog explores the possibility that dogs are an early iteration of programmable beings developed by humans.
Presented in a documentary style, the work points out that dogs’ behavioural characteristics have been moulded by human instruction (training, feeding, rewarding the canines) just as humans are now moulding robots and AI beings.
Also compelling is Seoul City Machine, a seven-minute film by Brisbane-born, LA-based Liam Young. It portrays the South Korean capital in the not-too-distant future, when the city is awash with drones, robots, cameras and sensors, with AI managing public services and infrastructure.
The CGI here is so realistic that one almost wondered whether the footage of roaming vending machines and drones delivering food is computer-generated or real.
Bionic Step by Vancouver-born, London-based Nina Davies also revolves around film, presenting a single video installation with sound, surrounded by light rings and mobile phones.
This work interrogates the commodification of the dancing body on social media platforms like TikTok, with a speculative short film implying that the TikTok dances of today could become the traditional folk dances of tomorrow.
The exhibition’s apogee (certainly the one demanding the most time from viewers) is Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities by Liu Chuang, who lives and works in Shanghai.
Presented on three-channel video with sound, this 40-minute film was inspired when Liu noticed that many bitcoin mining sites are located in hydroelectric plants in Western China – an area that is also home to many ethnic minority groups.
Vision of bitcoin mines and workers is interspersed with archival footage and photos of the minority groups, interwoven with excerpts from Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film Solaris and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind from 1977.
The film is hypnotic, beautiful and unique – although without the accompanying description provided by the gallery, it would have been difficult to decipher its meaning.
This raises interesting questions as to whether the meaning of art should be self-evident.
Whatever meaning one takes from the work – or the exhibition overall – there’s no denying that it is thought-provoking and affecting.
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Amongst the clouds leaves the viewer (or perhaps more correctly, the participant) with strong feelings of introspection about our place in this rapidly changing globe, where the nature of human interaction and even reality itself is fast evolving.
It probably won’t appeal to people whose idea of an art exhibition involves paintings hanging on walls – but will surely reward the curious, open-minded art lover.
Each work requires some time to experience and explore, with this reviewer spending the best part of two hours taking it all in.
Amongst the clouds
Artspace, Woolloomooloo NSW
Curators: Katie Dyer, Sarah Rose
Artists: Liu Chuang, Nina Davies, Archana Hande, Lawrence Lek, Sophie Penkethman-Young, Liam Young
Free entry
Amongst the clouds will be exhibited until 20 July 2025.
