Ben Cullen Williams is a London based artist, whose practice consists of sculptures, installations, photography and video. In his work, Williams explores humankind’s relationship to the world in a rapidly changing environment.
Here the artist and his collaborator, creative technologist Bryce Cronkite-Ratcliff, talk about their new project “Cold Flux”.
Cold Flux: Interface (2021) by Ben Cullen Williams
What is 'Cold Flux'?
(BCW) Cold Flux is a machine learning experiment trained on footage of the Larsen-B Ice shelf in Antarctica. In collaboration with creative technologist Bryce Cronkite-Ratcliff this footage was used to generate video landscapes.
Cold Flux: User Interaction (2021) by Ben Cullen Williams
These landscapes seemingly exist within a state of melting and freezing, forming and un-forming. The work invites the audience to slowly reflect on our current relationship to the world.
Antarctic Pavilion at the London Design Biennale (2021) by Ben Cullen Williams
It is currently installed at the London Design Biennale as a three-channel video installation. It is the first time Antarctica has had representation at the Biennale, so bringing the continent into the conversation is a powerful moment.
The installation brings the viewer into the work, engulfing them within sound and image, a bodily experience while allowing the viewer to reflect.
Cold Flux: Artwork Sample (2021) by Ben Cullen Williams
The online experiment brings this same mode of reflection online, allowing a global audience an experience of the work yet within a different context. It feels important given the concept behind the work, to not leave it exclusively within the context of the gallery but to make it as accessible as possible.
In the online version, the viewer is invited to interact, break and fracture the image, highlighting human intervention with the environment
Larsen-B Ice Shelf
What is the Larsen-B ice shelf?
(BCW) The Larsen-B ice shelf is a vast block of ice, the size of California, that splintered off from the Antarctic peninsula in 2002, and has been disintegrating since. I captured this footage when on an expedition to Antarctica with the polar explorer Robert Swan. It was one of the most beautiful yet saddest things I have witnessed, vast blocks of ice, and indeed life, slowly dying before my eyes.
Cold Flux: Artwork Sample (2021) by Ben Cullen Williams
Why did you want to use machine learning to create the work?
(BCW) As the icebergs have slowly been disappearing, machine learning can be used to aid a type of digital reconstruction, learning from the past to build something new. The icebergs within this process were formed again, not a direct reconstruction but newly formed.
Through the reconstruction of something that is being lost we focus our minds on that subject.
Alongside this, the lens through which we see the world is increasingly affected by technology; from satellite imagery to predictive models, there is a digital-material web that now covers the globe, so machine learning felt like the medium to explore this complex network.
Cold Flux Still 3 (2021) by Ben Cullen Williams
How was machine learning used?
(BCR) We built on research into Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to develop a system that could generate new videos from the footage Ben took of the Larsen-B Ice Shelf. These GANs work by training two networks that work against each other...
...the first is a model that recognizes what a frame from the input video looks like, and the second is a model trained to make new frames that trick the first model. To our more perceptive eyes, the outcome of this adversarial process has a surreal new aesthetic.
We started out running some small tests on a laptop generating a few low-resolution videos to see whether we could achieve a result that had the right feeling, then scaled up to training models that could generate high resolution video.
Cold Flux Still 2 (2021) by Ben Cullen Williams
What do you hope will be the effect of the artwork?
(BCW) I hope the artwork brings the viewer to a point of reflection, allowing them to question themselves in relation to the world around them, not only the physical world, but the technological network that is now intertwined with it. We have so many challenges to face in the upcoming years and this work asks: are the answers to our problems technological, or are there alternative ways to understand and protect our planet?
Explore the artwork 'Cold Flux'.