“Shilly-Shally”, I have so much to do that I am going to bed, procrastination / 09/01/2021, 08.05 pm / StyleGAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) image training model / Mix process / Limited collection of 8 images, four video artwork and edition of 5 + 2 artist proofs for each portrait

Utilizing data collection and artificial intelligence, this work explores procrastination and its effect on the individual and collective emotional state through an amalgamation of faces in movement. As the social world becomes more complex, layered, and fast paced, the human experience becomes more filtered and distracted. In an ever-changing world of technological advancements, this work shapeshifts through identity and individuality as it transforms procrastination into a reflection of the current state of the world. Using artificial intelligence as a paintbrush creates a cumulative composition of the human experience within these ideologies. The images reflected in our screens expose these fears in the possibilities of different versions of ourselves, posing the opportunity of failure dependent on the images we see in one another.

“We wake up with the agony of having to decide, knowing that one day we will have to decide, and yet we give up to keep postponing all the important things unnecessarily.”

In the research phase of this work, in-depth interviews about procrastination with eighty people between the ages of sixteen and sixty were conducted. These results were meticulously recorded in statistics. It became an incentive to explore these universal struggles that seemed to circulate in the interviewees’ responses. People inevitably went through similar circumstances. Interestingly enough, it was people aged thirty years and younger that expressed procrastination as a recurring conflict in their lives. Gaining knowledge about others’ feelings toward procrastination provided the ability to trace patterns that were reflected in each other’s experiences. As time went on, the project was influenced by this research. The ideas became highly complex and the project was delayed by indecision. Procrastination became an inevitable part of the creative process as different approaches were explored and dropped. The cyclical patterning of procrastination inspired the visual aspect of the work as the faces morphed into each other repeatedly.

In four portraits of still and moving images, the faces blink slowly as a representation of the tired state of procrastination that repeats itself. Through the research findings, the images of the faces chosen were reflected in the collected statistics. People were portrayed regardless of background and those who experienced considerable amounts of procrastination were thirty years and younger. After gathering these statistics, artificial intelligence was used to generate prototypical portraits that represented a composition of individuals. The focus of the work is the shapeshifting qualities of the faces, pulling the viewer in to observe the unfolding of emotions in all its complexity. The opening and closing of the eyes slows down this process, bringing feelings of agony and intensity to an uncomfortable stillness. In the uncertainty of the faces, a powerlessness is felt in the stillness of the portrait form as the skin stretches and evolves within the boundaries of the human shape. The viewer is left to be challenged by recognizing the ambiguity and emptiness through their own experiences and interpretation.