2024 · Video · 05:07 min

 

Scores explores the encounter between Fluxus performance instructions and AI image generation. I entered scores from The Fluxus Performance Workbook into an image-generation application, then animated the resulting images into a video. The workbook was edited by Ken Friedman, Owen Smith, and Lauren Sawchyn and published by Performance Research in 2002.

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The starting points include instructions by Nam June Paik, Eric Andersen, and Yoko Ono: watching a television through a mirror that covers its screen, producing soap bubbles with wind instruments, and leaving a canvas or painting on the floor or in the street. Fluxus made such instructions available for anyone to perform. I see a related possibility in AI tools, which allow people to produce images quickly without specialist skills.

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Yet the application refused some scores. Negotiating these refusals revealed the limits built into the software and raised questions about the values of the company behind it. Who sets the rules of image-making, and how do artists work within or around them?

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​As the process continued, my exchange with the machine began to feel personal. The images emerged through a conversation that complicated my sense of creativity and ownership. We know who wrote the original score, but who is the author of the new image? The work uses Fluxus to examine the possibilities and restrictions of making art with AI.