Sam Gritter

AI is a self-devouring snake

As it currently exists, AI is merely an interactive reproducer of existing data. Text and images generated by AI are fed back into its databases until the original source material is no longer recognisable. AI is an Ouroboros; a snake consuming its own tail. This core association led me into an ongoing process of free association surrounding the broader cultural and mythological symbolism that might help illuminate the form and workings of AI.

To me, all the associations we make can be explained through our subconscious. Everyone’s associative process is unique; this one is mine.

The installation uses the walls as its canvas, allowing the work to expand in multiplicity, constrained only by the space itself. The imagery is rendered in white on black, evoking the aesthetic of historical and scientific media: chalkboards, X-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans, MRI scans, and photographic negatives. For me, the process of association is also a process of investigation. Chalk and loose notes offer a flexible way of working, enabling thoughts to be captured before they disappear and encouraging the continual expansion of the associative process. Above all, this shared visual language naturally generates new associations; through their colour and style, the images become a cohesive whole.

The title, The Corpse of the Leviathan, is itself an example of association and can be explained in three steps:

1. AI haunts the world while devouring itself through deep-sea communication cables.
2. Those cables are sea serpents lying on the ocean floor.
3. Dying sea serpents, a dead Leviathan.

I invite the viewer to think along with me and to form their own associative process.

So I ask you: do you see what I see?