Christopher Wormald: YOU + A.I. = A.I.M.
CHRISTOPHER WORMALD
YOU + A.I. = A.I.M.
November 5, 2022 through May 14, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 5 from 7-10PM
YOU + A.I. = A.I.M. delves into humanity’s relationship to technology and its revolutionary, mundane, or destructive impact on the world. This project is an ever-expanding series depicting past, present, and future imagined scenarios through the lens of A.I.-generated images. Portrayed are visions of utopia and dystopia: a future in which humans no longer struggle or are replaced and made irrelevant. For this installation, artist Christopher Wormald uses A.I.-generated images created by feeding descriptive text prompts into a computer program – a new medium that can create original images as quickly as ideas are conceived. The resulting images range from the uncanny to the hyper-realistic or even comically absurd.
Wormald’s initial concept is inspired by artist Jason Allen, who won the blue-ribbon prize in the digital arts category at the 2022 Colorado State Fair with his A.I. generated artwork, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial. The news around Jason Allen’s winning artwork has sparked debate and controversy on whether the use of A.I. in art is a hack or a shortcut – bringing into question A.I.’s impact on the future careers of graphic designers and others in the creative industry. The Arts have seen the implications of technologies in the past, from the printing press, camera, synthesizer, and more, with mixed results of success and failure. In YOU + A.I. = A.I.M., Christopher questions how individuals can use technologies responsibly and considers his role as an artist moving forward.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Christopher Wormald is a LA-based multidisciplinary artist. He studied photography at OCC and earned a BFA in sculpture at Cal State Long Beach. His practice is often centered around the process and technological limitations of digital mediums, working through analog and digital photographic processes, mold-making, installation, video, and sound. From 2013-2017, Christopher wrote and performed as one-half of the electronic music duo, Intimatchine. Their live musical performances incorporated Christopher’s experimental visual aesthetic and technological knowledge. Intimatchine performed a live ASMR version of their set inside Cocky Eek’s inflatable pavilion, Sphaerae, at the Pasadena AXS Festival in 2014. In 2018, Christopher was artist-in-residence at Grand Central Art Center, where he experimented with live musical improvisations on a modular synthesizer within a multimedia sculptural installation and wrote his first solo EP under the moniker Stud Drift. He lived in Nashville from 2019 – 2022, experiencing the tragic March 3, 2020, tornado and creating the installation, A Year After the Storm, at the Bordeaux Branch Library that artistically documented the tornado’s path precisely one year later. In the summer of 2022, Christopher returned to Southern California, where he resides today.