The Observer - 2019
HD Video with audio
Duration: 13:30 continuous loop
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. As an observer the viewer can see new ways of being.
This work marks a voyeuristic return to Emergence: a game-like computer system that Allen developed in the late 1990’s. Emergence includes a generative AI system that allows the artist to simulate life-like behaviors of animated artificial lifeforms.
The viewer’s experience draws attention to the abstracted nature of the natural landscape and to the abstracted life-forms with their own rules of behavior. With this work Allen has created contemplative videos akin to moving paintings.