作为当季展览林顿·约翰逊个展 “最佳合成答案”的公共项目，拉蒙·阿马罗博士受邀与艺术家进行对谈。他们深入探讨展览中的诸多作品，讨论作为诗歌的爵士、语言与数据点的联系、约翰逊的虚拟化身如何抵达上海，和他的作品中“自我生成”的特性，并涉及关于视觉和语言可塑性的思考。
“《最佳合成答案1号：横渡》本质上是一种完全的推想（speculation），除了能够被我们实际观看，它不具备任何实在性。之所以我不想预先渲染这件作品，而希望让它自我生成，是因为计算机无法渲染人类视觉意义上的真实：计算机只能迅速地输出图像，调整和补充信息等额外工作则交由人眼完成。《横渡》在我们的观看中成真。或许，在知觉的边界处、计算机无法触及的领域，我们得以从惯常的视觉形式中解放。比如，在极暗的数字空间中观看时，眼睛会自动填补那片区域‘应当存在’的内容，而动画师的任务就是给眼睛提供足够的留白，让其自行填充。因此，如果我的作品处于一种几乎不可见、几乎无法‘阅读’的状态，那么它们也许正存在于语言的外沿——这又回溯到黑色抽象，以及关于记忆的本质及其构成的思考。”
—— 林顿·约翰逊
关于讲者：
拉蒙·阿马罗博士是荷兰新研究所的数字文化高级研究员和"-1"项目的首席策展人，该项目是一个用于测试新工具、方法和数字文化公共应用的实验平台。他的写作、研究和艺术实践位于黑人研究、数字文化、心理社会研究与计算理性批判的交汇点。拉蒙拥有机械工程学士学位、社会学硕士学位和技术哲学博士学位。在加入荷兰新研究所之前，阿马罗曾担任伦敦大学学院全球南方艺术与视觉文化讲师（助理教授）、伦敦大学金史密斯学院视觉文化讲师、美国机械工程师学会工程项目经理以及通用汽车公司的质量设计工程师。他的近期著作《黑色技术物体：机器学习与黑人存在的愿望》（2023年，Sternberg出版）探讨了编程和数学的深奥性质，以及种族等级制度的深刻渗透，旨在激发对当代算法实践的替代性思考。
林顿·约翰逊（1990年生于美国旧金山）是一名艺术家和诗人，现居柏林和纽约莱纳佩家园。他的创作以语言为基础。约翰逊的个展包括“恩斯特·里彻尔雕塑艺术奖”（Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for Sculpture），德国德累斯顿阿尔伯提努（Albertinum，2022）；“大数法则：我们的身体”（Law of Large Numbers: Our Bodies），伦敦奇森海尔画廊（Chisenhale Gallery，2021）；“大数法则：我们的自我”（Law of Large Numbers: Our Selves），纽约雕塑中心（2021）；“限制”（Circumscribe），杜塞尔多夫尤莉娅·施托舍克收藏（2019）。他的作品也在国际范围内广泛展出，包括“处处都是外人”，第60届威尼斯双年展；“污染”（Contamination），弗赖堡艺术协会（2021）；“激进阅读室”（Radical Reading Room），纽约哈莱姆工作室博物馆（The Studio Museum in Harlem，2019）；“没有人允诺你的明天”（Nobody Promised You Tomorrow），布鲁克林博物馆（2019）；“遥远的触摸”（TOUCHING FROM A DISTANCE），柏林文学馆（Literaturhaus，2018）；“没有框架的世界”（The Unframed World），巴塞尔电子艺术馆（Haus der elektronischen Künste，2017）。他出版的作品包括《没人睡得比白人更好》（Nobody Sleeps Better Than White People），Inpatient Press出版（2016）； VR书《在角落相遇》（Meet in the Corner），Publishing-House.Me出版（2017）；《鄙视国王》（Shade the King），Capricious Publishing出版（2017）；《大数法则：黑色声渊》（The Law of Large Numbers: Black Sonic Abyss），奇森海尔画廊、Inpatient Press和雕塑中心出版（2021）。他出生于旧金山奥隆人未割让的土地。
For the public program of Rindon Johnson’s exhibition Best Synthetic Answer currently on view at the museum, Dr. Ramon Amaro joins Rindon Johnson for a conversation, in which they delve deep into the many works in the exhibition, discuss poetry as jazz, the relationship between language and data point, the arrival of Johnson’s avatar in Shanghai, and the self-generating aspects within Johnson's work with questions concerning one’s vision and the malleability of language.
“Best Synthetic Answer #1: Crossing is completely speculative. It never has any reality, except that we can see it. My works are self-generating and not rendered out because the computer cannot render what our vision believes as true. It can only very quickly output images. Then our eyes will do the adjusting and all the extra labor, which is something uniquely human. By us seeing the Crossing, it becomes real. At the edges of our perception lies what the computer can’t do, and this is perhaps where we can find liberation outside of the traditional forms of seeing that we’re used to. For example, in a dark digital space, our eyes fill in what should be there. And it’s up to the animator to give the eye enough space, so that it can fill in the rest. So if my works exist in a place where they’re barely visible, barely legible in that way, then maybe they also exist on that very outside of language. This ties back to Black abstraction and questions of memory—how it is formed and constructed..”
Rindon Johnson
About Speakers:
Dr. Ramon Amaro is Senior Researcher for Digital Culture and Lead Curator of -1, a testing ground for new tools, methods and public uses of digital culture at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. His writings, research and artistic practice emerge at the intersections of Black Study, digital culture, psychosocial study, and the critique of computational reason. Ramon holds a BSe in Mechanical Engineering, an MA in Sociology and a PhD in Philosophy of Technology. Before joining Nieuwe Instituut, Ramon worked as Lecturer (Assistant Prof.) in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South at UCL (London), Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, Engineering Program Manager at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Quality Design Engineer at General Motors Corporation. His recent book, The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black Being (Sternberg, 2023) contemplates the abstruse nature of programming and mathematics, and the deep incursion of racial hierarchy, to inspire alternative approaches to contemporary algorithmic practice.
Rindon Johnson (b. San Francisco, 1990) is an artist and poet and currently lives between Berlin and Lenapehoking, New York. He has based his work in language. Johnson’s selected solo exhibitions include Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for Sculpture, The Albertinum, Dresden, Germany (2022); Law of Large Numbers: Our Bodies, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2021); Law of Large Numbers: Our Selves, SculptureCenter, New York (2021); Circumscribe, The Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2019), among others. Johnson has participated in group exhibitions internationally, including Foreigners Everywhere, The 60th Venice Biennale (2024); Contamination, Kunstverein Freiburg (2021); Radical Reading Room, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2019); Nobody Promised You Tomorrow, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2019); TOUCHING FROM A DISTANCE, Literaturhaus, Berlin (2018); The Unframed World, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel (2017). He is the author of Nobody Sleeps Better Than White People (Inpatient, 2016), the VR book, Meet in the Corner (Publishing-House.Me, 2017), Shade the King (Capricious, 2017) and The Law of Large Numbers: Black Sonic Abyss (Chisenhale, Inpatient, SculptureCenter, 2021). He was born on the unceded territories of the Ohlone people, San Francisco.
