Martine Syms: Neural Swamp

New commissioned work by an important American contemporary artist using a multidisciplinary approach to examine issues of race and identity

Produced for the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media by the multidisciplinary artist Martine Syms (b. 1988), Neural Swamp is an immersive video installation that builds upon Syms’s interest in the proliferation, circulation, and consumption of images, as well as her continued research into machine systems that erase or make invisible Black bodies, voices, and narratives. The publication documents this new work, offering in-depth analysis and a visual essay that reflects the specific approach to images and text characterizing Syms’s practice. Neural Swamp’s multichannel presentation reveals its characters through their reading of a continually changing script, the variations determined by a text-generating model. Through these dynamic interactions, along with the installation’s physical elements, Syms creates a kaleidoscopic view of the world and our complex relationship with one another and with technology.