CAD Conspiracy (2019) is an AI-assisted video-essay installation, realized in collaboration with artist Bahar Noorizadeh and engineer Christopher Tegho.
Taking the standpoint of a machine vision trained on the global tokens of uneven accessibility, the work peeks into exhibitions that have neither been documented nor even staged but artificially imagined as installation shots. Generative Adversarial Networks study the patterns of several thousands of pictures from ContemporaryArtDaily.com and in return produce new installation shots, giving rise to images of emerging interiors that house spectral artworks without authors.
A thought experiment in the medium of conspiracy theory, a willful suspension of disbelief in one’s own questioning of totalities that are difficult to represent: What if the contemporary art world doesn’t actually exist? What if the exhibition views lined up along the infinite scroll of an online platform are no more (and no less) than simulations? Bringing Contemporary Art Daily closer to Computer-Aided Design, the project asks: What kind of a readymade or a found image would the artifice of an imagined or simulated installation shot make? What are the medial conditions that enable such deep simulation of systemic doubt, such conspiratorial thinking?
CAD Conspiracy was commissioned by Azar Mahmoudian for the exhibition When Legacies Become Debts at The Mosaic Rooms in London where it was the subject of a panel discussion with theorist Suhail Malik. It was later exhibited at the Alserkal Residency Project Space in Dubai during an event that included contributions by artists Ho Rui An and Jol Thomson.
Mahan Moalemi 