“The video AI. Artificial Innocence is borne out of a contradiction. It is based on three fundamental elements. A few friends here, the sea acting as a bridge, implying history, opening up a distance; and some changes of light, stemming from the crossing of different pieces of information, the documents of a tale. Addition and sum of sources, imposition and the forgetting of postures. This is a video open to new cycles.”
In this video, Maite Cajaravile develops one of the many virtual illusions, which we will be able to access in the near future. Two guys and a girl are relaxing in cyberspace, represented by the real image of a beach. The non-disguised chroma key justifies the position of the figures, floating over the images. They are sitting, in somatic peace, relaxed, somewhat bored. The optimistic music of the video game emphasises their attitude. Some airplanes cross the sky over the sea, and the figures continue in their autistic repose whilst the landscape explodes and the ideal music is intercepted by the sounds of drama. The trio is bored, on of them throws rocks at the sea under a green sky, the colour of digital war. Each time a rock is thrown, a bomb explodes and the sound is heard. But their attitude doesn’t change. After a number of explosions, the three remain relaxed, oblivious to their environment. The screen then shows us a panoramic view of a white sky whilst the happy sound of electrolounge returns, loosing intensity with the echoes of explosions in the background.
One of the functions of art has been to construct images, virtual models of the world. A virtual landscape, the space of communication and exchange of the cybernetic community, can be made to reproduce the patterns of behaviour of the real world. By means of the images of frivolous rituals linked to kitsch utopias of happiness, this video warns us against the reality of this panacea, today inaccessible, and the isolationist consequences that it would bring about if it were to arrive. The artificial dream breaks into pieces when it is consumed, and ceases to be exceptional, since there is no better refuge against domestic chaos than the cartesian universe, since beyond the screen there is a reality broken down by those same ones who generate the illusion, since apathy does not distinguish between realities.
What this video then ends up doing is to propose questions such as: what is it that does not exist? might the transformation into the virtual world not be too quick, such that the user is distanced from reality? how far can we go to be entertained? this innocence, will it be the next intelligence? is a revolution really taking place, or is it just a mirage?
