Learning Machine - a solo exhibition of new works, with Backwoods Gallery in Naarm / Melbourne.
September 23 to October 9, 2022

Dave Court's art exhibition, titled "Learning Machine," presents a multiplicitous collection of media including laser-cut paintings, virtual reality drawings, DALL-E interventions, 3D printed sculpture, projection, and an infinite scroll of painting. The exhibition, rendered in vibrant colors and shapes, is an immersive experience that heightens the senses and encourages attention to the unfolding moments generated by the works. Court references Aza Raskin's web design technique of the infinite scroll in his series of paintings, which are accompanied by digitally rendered versions created using the artificial intelligence program DALL-E. The exhibition invites viewers to engage with online platforms and exercise online literacy as they navigate the chaotic assemblage of information presented.

Exhibition blurb written by ChatGPT based on essay written by Gabi Lane.

The primary collection of ten paintings from the exhibition, 5 in the left hand column are designed by drawing in VR, using Oculus Quest 2 app Gravity Sketch to create elements which were then arranged and rendered as images which were vectorised, lasercut from plywood and painted.
Each of the paintings on the right hand column below were made by generating AI variations of the original painting designs using DALL-E 2 which were then vectorised, lasercut and painted.

Works made by DALL-E generated from 3 paintings from my 2021 exhibition House Party, Loop Gesture 7, Loop Gesture 8 and Loop Gesture 10. These artworks were also used as wine labels for natural wine brans, Reverb.

Read the zine made as a part of the show, featuring essays by Freya Langley and Gabi Lane about the work:

Infinite scroll paintings, mixed media on canvas with rotating armature, fabricated by Jimmy Dodd.

Interactive sound sculpture made in collaboration with Motez, this work is made up of 3 elements.

1.) Sculptural pieces are made from offcut polystyrene pieces, hot wire cut and painted.
2.) Soundscape composed by Motez, developed in response to themes and parameters of the work. It comprises a 20 minute looping continuous bed track, with 9 separate elements that play over the top of this track, and are switched on, off and altered by moving the pieces around the space.
3.) The projected video work is in two elements:
a.) A digitally rendered composition made in Blender of ten 3D objects - 5 made based on abstract gestural drawings done in VR and 5 based on designs generated by DALLE-2 AI image generator in response to the first 5 compositions. These images were then created as paintings, and the photographs of the painted surface used to re-texture the 3D objects. These objects were then animated composed, lit and rendered out as 2000 frames of video
b.) The second video was created by taking this first video and having an AI model trained on all of my previous work. This model was then used to generate an image of ‘complex connected machinery painted in bright glossy colours’ from each of the 2000 frames of video - using Disco Diffusion VQGAN+CLIP AI model. These videos are layered one on top of the other, with the AI elements revealed by moving sculptural elements around the space.