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The Red Earth Project

Red Earth: computational translations between western and non-western ontology. A critical study of machine learning (AI). 2019-
theredearthproject.org
Red Earth: computational translations between
western and non-western ontology (2021-)
theredearthproject.org

Red Earth is an ongoing artistic, interdisciplinary study centred on prose reflections and machine translation, drawing attention to the precarious status of non-western cultural heritage, knowledge systems and practices in the increasingly dominant western systems of data, virtual architectures and AI technologies. This research asks how can alternative cosmologies be better represented within virtual architectures powered by AI innovation.

Transhumanist ideologies of a singular ontological history imply a determined 'post-human' future. Colonial legacy is bound up in the etymology of programming languages, and statistical and probabilistic methodologies facilitating this development. With a universal 'morality' built from this ontological history, there is no room for indigenous cosmologies in a virtual "post-humanity" built from selective data, while extraction of natural resources from the African continent, from rare metals to human data and cheap labour, powers the future of increasingly energy-intensive computer hardware.
Red Earth, a primarily theoretical study, appropriates machine learning methodologies to synthesise relational objects that might indicate potential new pathways between divergent cosmologies, with the focus of this particular study on the origins of West African language and thought.

Exploring western morality in an original work of prose written by Michael Salu, language translation models are used to translate the work into a data topography. Inspired by Yoruba oratorical thought and manifestations of language within physical objects, this data is then used as raw material to sculpt a series of virtual totems; sculptures for a codex imbued with aggregated thought, distilling the exchange between text and data, colonial and inherent language.
Machine translation combines with intuitive, cognitive translations of ideas between artistic forms to explore whether syntheses of memory, beyond object and material, can suggest ways we might develop alternative cultural heritages, or whether computational methodologies based on statistical analyses can ever be in dialogue with other metaphysical origins and 'uncertainties'.
Exhibitions, Events & Publications

Red Earth, The Book. Forthcoming from Calamari Archive (Press), Autumn 2023

Princeton University. A talk about the thinking behind Red Earth, May 2023.

Cybernetics & Ghosts, Writer's Mosaic. A guest edition by Michael Salu. March 2023.

Red Earth Solo Exhibition, Studio Hannibal Berlin, November 2021 - January 2022

Design Studio Volume 4: Working at the Intersection: Architecture After the Anthropocene (RIBA)

FLAT Journal (UCLA), November 2021

Queen Mob's Teahouse, October 2021

Berfrois, September 2021

Archive of Forgetfulness: Online Exhibition, Goethe Institute South Africa, March 2021

Blake and Vargas: Artist Diaries, July 2020
Red Earth, the book.
Published by Calamari Archive (Press) Oct 15.

"In Michael Salu's Red Earth, writing becomes a virtuosic act of listening. Salu listens to history's castoffs—slaves thrown overboard, soil used up and abandoned—so that the relationship between historical hierarchies of power and contemporary crises of ecology gently becomes obvious as if of its own accord. This amidst the strange and irresistible ether of Salu's polychronic forms and tones, as echoes of the Divine Comedy leak into the Orphic narrator's radio talk show. As in the classic novels of Daniela Hodrová and Ahmet Altan, Salu's floating polyrhythms seem almost to weave themselves, crossing historical eras, terrestrial deserts, ocean depths, and metaphysical thresholds—a polyphony of voices from all the dimensions of the world."—Mandy-Suzanne Wong, author of The Box
Solitary Breath

12 minutes.
Single channel video loop.
2021

This video work is part of a broader interdisciplinary study that combines photography, video, prose and computational processes to think conceptually about translation in order to develop new pathways to alternative cosmologies of thought. Red Earth is a process-based study and less concerned with an artistic end point; the artworks serving as distillations along a timeline of thought and translation. In Solitary Breath, prose, video, virtual sculptures (deriving from computational translations of the prose) meet to evoke consideration for cultural dissonances that can be experienced from existing across geographical and cross-cultural realities. These are observed through non linear time/space inspired by Yoruba mythology, which can be potentially responded to in virtual space and is also illustrated in part by the looping of the video. Moving image is approached like painting here, moving back and forth between worlds; virtual incarnation of the discord that can come from restricted cultural and access to language, culture and origin; apparent due to current, geopolitical and environmental shifts changes. Infinite open worlds are hinted at—how might we evolve the representation of alternative cosmologies of thought?

The Berlin Edition of Red Earth
A chart depicting the theoretical and practical process of this study.
Exhibition view, Berlin Nov 2021-Jan 2022
Red Earth, The Book
Perfect bound, digitally printed. 113 pages of original prose by the artist. The source text for all of ‘Red Earth’. Red Earth is a sprawling prose poem, in which the artist meditates on the precocity of life and death, geographical dissonance, different cultural interpretations of morality, and what the virtual realm means for the self and memory; particularly memories unacknowledged by the ‘universal’ language of code. 15.3cm x 23.4cm Edition 1 of 1 (non-trade) 2021
Exhibition view, Berlin Nov 2021-Jan 2022
Fragments of the book Red Earth are dispersed around the space, creating a multi-layered narrative flow to experiencing the works.
Sixteenth Century Technology: Analysis of My Tongue
Aso Oke Fabric. Hand and machine woven in Ibadan, Nigeria. Embroidery of a digital output from a GPT-3-based textual analysis of the written prose ‘Red Earth’. 100cm x 100cm Edition 1 of 1. 2021
Sixteenth Century Technology: Analysis of My Tongue
Detail.
Exhibition view, Berlin Nov 2021-Jan 2022
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Direct Translation Diptych 1,2,3 & 4
Diptych. Mixed Media: antique paper and ink. Text to image data translation from deep learning model. Virtually hand-modelled sculpture from data output. 80cm x 40cm 2021
Direct Translation Diptych 1,2,3 & 4
Diptych. Mixed Media: antique paper and ink. Text to image data translation from deep learning model. Virtually hand-modelled sculpture from data output. 80cm x 40cm 2021
Red Earth, The Book
Ever Abeokuta
Mixed media. Fine art print. 53 x 83cm Edition 1 of 3 2021
A Solitary Breath
12 minutes. Single channel video loop. 2021
Amor Fati
Fine art print 45 x 30cm Edition 1 of 3 2020
Red Earth
Fine art print 45 x 30cm Edition 1 of 3 2020
How Can Time Become a Circle
Fine art print - 41 x 26cm Edition 1 of 3 2020
Exhibition view, Berlin Nov 2021-Jan 2022
Fragments of the book Red Earth are dispersed around the space, creating a multi-layered narrative flow to experiencing the works.
Colonial Enterprise
Triptych. Fine art print. Mixed media: photography. Text to image data translation from deep learning model. Virtually hand-modelled sculpture from data output. Digital collage. 110cm x 40cm Edition 1 of 3 2021
Exhibition view, Berlin Nov 2021-Jan 2022
Exhibition view, Berlin Nov 2021-Jan 2022
Exhibition view, Berlin Nov 2021-Jan 2022
Fragments of the book Red Earth are dispersed around the space, creating a multi-layered narrative flow to experiencing the works.
Exhibition view, Berlin Nov 2021-Jan 2022
Deference
Fine art print. Mixed media: Photography. Text to image data translation from deep learning model. Virtually hand-modelled sculpture from data output. Digital collage. 54cm x 74cm Edition 1 of 3 2021
Exhibition view, Berlin Nov 2021-Jan 2022
Although this is a study interrogating technology, engaging visitors interactively in a traditional sense has been important; both in how they were able to engage with the works and the events we held in the space. Readings from the book Red Earth, as well as writers and poets invited to respond to the themes in the exhibition helped foster a environment of real dialogue and community. during the course of the exhibition.

Selected Projects

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