Fever Dream, 2021
Video and sound, GPT-2 AI generated text, custom-built screen
Variable duration and dimensions
“The work and its library of rotating footage function as a conspiracy generator for settler futurity, reliant on dispossession, denial, and illusions of choice. UFO sightings, space cults, and deepfake prophecies intermingle with new mythologies of Artificial Intelligence, rare earth extraction, and nuclear paranoia.”— Christopher Green
Kite and Devin Ronneberg’s interactive video installation Fever Dream algorithmically generates a collage of video and text that suggest links between strategies of settler colonialism and the weaponisation of big data and technology. The installation features overlapping video footage scraped from the internet that addresses a range of topics relating to Indigenous worldviews, conspiracy theories, robotics and artificial intelligence. AI-generated texts appear over the video footage, often with portentous messages about the fate of humankind, civilisation’s dependance on computer technology and its use for controlling populations. Movement within the gallery space is monitored by a sensor and computer programme, which in turn triggers changes in the video and text—in other words, harvesting data from visitors and making them unwitting actors within the system.
Sound description: White noise plays when TV static footage appears. All other sound comes from spoken word and sound tracks from original video sources.