My works aim to be introspective: what prompts us to do the things we do?

By producing an AI version of myself and people I have never communicated with in ‘real life’, I hope to demonstrate how creating social situations through technology is as alluring as it is dangerous, as technology ultimately encroaches on our sense of personal autonomy. The notion that our actions can be choreographed has also caused my recent interest in the ‘sitcom.’ Though possibly outdated by now, as sitcoms were more prevalent in the 1990s and 2000s, the eerie tension of artificial stage design and supposedly relatable characters prompting audience laughter, suggest that sitcoms are precursory to our current technological landscapes.

The development of my recent practice mirrors this extension from sitcoms to immersive technology, as I have begun producing interactive Macro-enabled videos, which test the distinctions between understanding and intelligence. Often taking the format of a script, my works rely a lot on words, to initiate an internal dialogue between the viewer and the site. In terms of imagery, I aim to be poetic, taking basic gestures, such as introducing figures and colours and giving them a non-emotive agenda.

Considering the irony of emerging technological ‘landscapes’ like VR games and the Metaverse, my work seeks to explore the parameters of what is natural and what is artificial. I am concerned by the uncanniness of such phenomena: how advanced amalgamations of real and fake spaces ultimately thrive on our disillusionment. The AI-based films produced by interactive PC games such as Façade produced by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern in 2005, locate computer-generated characters in mundane domestic situations. I am fascinated by how these creators reverberate kitchen sink realism, introducing an element of irony by substituting real people for fake characters.

Now, more than ever, we live in an age of the forgotten familiar.

This has also been prompted, in large part, by the bewildering effects of a global pandemic, which secludes us to our screens and forces us to find comfort in the artificial. My work sees to engage in debates surrounding what exactly being comfortable is. There is something therapeutic about Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s work in how radically and somewhat cleanly she redistributes racial and gender roles: audiences are forced to follow narratives which prioritise the otherwise marginalised black trans community. Alternatively, Elizabeth Price’s audiovisual installations subtly remark on collective experience, most notably the walkthrough spatial triptych of ‘The Woolworths Choir’, which has encouraged my fascination with how we are simultaneously together and separate.

My pieces intend to mock these systems, thus patronising audiences into making conscious and sub-conscious decisions, studying how divisive technology can be.

Website: imogenknight.co.uk

Instagram: @imogenknight.art

Images

Sit.com, 2022, audiovisual installation.

Instant Gratification, 2022, audiovisual installation.

SEE AND WAIT, 2022, audiovisual installation.