Buxton Contemporary has announced the launch of its third Light Source commission Fawn in the Forest by Sydney-based artist Grant Stevens.
In Fawn in the Forest, an animated juvenile deer wanders through a computer-generated redwood forest. Programmed with artificial intelligence (AI), the fawn moves placidly around the environment, walking, eating, and resting undisturbed by distraction, living by algorithm.
An AI camera tracks its movements, gliding through the forest to create a single continuous point of vision shot rendering and streaming in real-time. The fawn is isolated, confined and alone, but also protected and buffered from the chaotic world beyond.
Working predominantly with computer graphics, moving image, and photography, Grant Stevens’ practice considers the various ways that digital technologies and conventions of representation mediate our inner worlds and social realities. In the contemporary world pervaded by film, television and screens, Grant invites us to explore how we understand, relate to each other and ourselves, construct and communicate our experiences – lived, imagined, social and psychological.
Grant Stevens has exhibited widely nationally and internationally since the early 2000s. His work is represented in numerous public, private and corporate collections, including: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Kaldor Collection, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas. He is represented by Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney, and Starkwhite, Auckland, and is currently Deputy Head of the School of Art & Design at the University of New South Wales.
Light Source commissions are a key part of Buxton Contemporary’s expanded digital program. The museum has commissioned and is supporting the development of six new projects. The participating artists have been invited to produce ambitious new work that will be presented virtually, or that will have an online presence or dimension.
Light Source commissions provides artists with an opportunity to create work in different presentation formats that will then have a second life outside the virtual environment when exhibited together as a series of discrete projects in expanded physical formats at Buxton Contemporary in early 2021.
Fawn in the Forest can be viewed until Sunday 13 December 2020. For more information, visit: www.buxtoncontemporary.com for details.
Image: Grant Stevens, Fawn in the Forest, 2020, Live streamed procedurally generated computer graphics with sound, assisted by Pat Younis – courtesy the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney