Carla Gannis
Carla Gannis
GoldenShower3, 2021
Digital Image
12600 x 7400 pixels
Courtesy of the artist. Kindly lent by TRANSFER Gallery
GoldenShower3 (2021) is an adaptation of a 4K video work (incorporating a physical representation of the artist herself) and an augmented reality work (using an avatar representation of the artist) from 2016 entitled Golden Shower. In this Web3 version of the work, Gannis presents the video version of corporeal "Carla" next to the "virtual" version of herself in a diptych. Both hold a smartphone in their hands, and on the screen is an image from an ancient Greek vase depicting the myth of Danaë. According to the myth, Zeus came to Danaë in a shower of gold and (it can be presumed) had non-consensual sex with her. There were serious ramifications, as she then gave painful birth to the half human/half god Perseus. In this adaptation of the 2016 work, Bitcoin has been replaced with Ethereum, and “Carla” and “Carla” experience the cognitive dissonance of this “mythic” shower of gold. Who knows how this tale will end? Both panels are presented on a background pattern that is the result of the artist’s training, with an Ethereum image dataset, of an AI GANs algorithm. Artificial Intelligent (AI) Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) are machine learning models that can create new data sets based on existing data eg. show a photograph of a person that doesn’t exist in real life.
Carla Gannis is an interdisciplinary American artist born in 1970, based in Brooklyn, New York.
She produces works that consider the uncanny complications between grounded and virtual reality, nature and artifice, science and science fiction in contemporary culture. Fascinated by digital semiotics, Gannis takes a horror vacui approach to her artistic practice, culling inspiration from networked communication, art and literary history, emerging technologies and speculative design.
Gannis’ work has appeared in numerous exhibitions and screenings as Whitney Museum of Art (US), DAM Gallery (DE), TRANSFER Gallery (US) Hudson River Museum (US), Yonkers (US), Fotografiska (SE). She has participated in numerous panels e.g. at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (US).