25 OCTOBER 2019. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London – the world's leading museum of art and design - are delighted to be adding Nye Thompson's versioned drawing ‘«The Seeker» Words That Remake The World’ to their permanent collection.
This work was first shown publicly at the V&A as part of their ‘Artificially Intelligent’ display, curated by Irini Papadimitriou. During this time it was also featured on BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Art of Now: Surveillance’. Versions of the drawing have since been presented at venues around the world, including ZKM Karlsruhe (DE), Chronus Arts Center (CN) and Ars Electronica (AT), and it was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize 2019.
This drawing was created by Thompson as part of her project The Seeker. The Seeker is a Demiurge AI, a machinic entity, which travels the globe virtually. It looks out onto our world and describes its visions. The Seeker’s base substrate is the hard/soft/ware matrix of the internet and its eyes are the swarms of surveillance cameras that encrust our world.
The Seeker has travelled the world for three years, outputting tens of thousands of descriptions of its visions – objects and concepts. The giant drawing ‘Words That Remake The World’ is a topographical mapping – taken in 2018 – of these visions. The drawing represents a point-in-time snapshot of the Seeker’s developing conceptual landscape.
The drawing will be joining the V&A’s permanent collection as a 1900 x 1500 mm Giclee Fine Art Print.