The Observer - 2019
Projected Video
Duration: 13:30 continuous loop
The Observer (1999-2019) is a moving painting that takes us through rich and vibrant digital landscapes, observing strange new lifeforms as we go. Created using Emergence: an AI computer system that Allen developed in the late 1990s as an art tool to build virtual worlds alive with artificial life - abstract forms with life-like behaviors that are brought to life through programs that define their behaviors, their personalities.
The Observer provides a contemplative environment that feels both natural and synthetic, familiar and strange. It draws the audience into a world of moving abstract forms with their own rules of behavior - and we as observers can see new ways of being.