The Object as a Label

This essay is a soliloquy. In the 75th year of India’s independence, how do I consume art,
especially forms of art that aim to aggregate material memory? The ‘I’ may be replaced
by anyone reading this: a visitor to the museum, perhaps a local, maybe a foreigner; or
even a transnational person. The experience of engaging with a museum object is bound
to be different for any or all of the above categories of people; something we don’t always
register while collectively viewing art objects. Furthermore, what about the artist who
created the object? They too would have a point of engagement and a view different from
us, the viewers. Now, if I were to problematise this act of viewing further, what happens
when objects of local recall are cast afresh in contemporary forms? Do we all still view the
same thing? And more crucially, what is it that we are viewing here?


LN Tallur often provokes this tension of engagement when audiences confront his art. As
a contemporary artist who frequently employs sculpture, his works consociate with India’s
material history and are often greeted with bewilderment. We think we understand what
these artistic representations stand for. Their outward forms conform to material memory
for locals, and for others, they stand as representations of an India they are familiar with
in art and ritual life. Tallur’s deep engagement with traditional forms, however, has always
seen a rupture in its execution. What we think of as an object is quite often not what it
is, be that as it may, within the white cube space of a contemporary gallery or a museum.
What do we offer to visitors by way of engagement beyond passive facsimile recognitions?
Is the intent of the artist translatable beyond a caption, a text panel or even this essay?


Tallur was invited by MAP to dive into the Museum’s collection of deepalakshmi and
kinnara lamp sculptures. As the harbingers of light, deepalakshmi lamps in Indian culture
are considered sacred objects bestowed with the power of enlightenment, wisdom and
knowledge. This was frequently extended to indicate prosperity and hence auspiciousness,
across several Indic religions and cultures. These lamps thus sanctify the area they light
up, as if transformed by divine grace. Seen in a wide range of sizes, shapes and materiality, their recorded presence from antiquity to the present is evidenced by sheer volumes of
existence. The artworks that make up this show are a result of an artistic response to the
Museum’s collection.


The traditional Indian oil lamp, a ubiquitous everyday object is now largely relegated to
ceremonial use. With the arrival of electricity, the use of modern bulbs, tube lights
and LED lights has meant that the lamps’ utilitarian function is now largely consigned
to history. Ritual usage in shrines across various religious practices continues, retaining
some currency in everyday imagination. However, in its outer form or external shape, the
representation and translation of the lamp as a source of light is not that elegant, when
viewed alongside its modern-day equivalent. Traditional lamps have long held greater
appeal than contemporary versions. More than the light we see, use and encounter — it
is the object which gives light that has typically captured our imagination. The trained
museologist in Tallur has always been interested in the inner machinations of museums
— the wealth of material culture and the memories and stories that they impart. The
artist in Tallur, however, has another quandary when confronting these objects. Seeking
to move away from verbal narratives and textual labels, his attempts have been to try and
understand and explain objects through their own materiality. The object as a label, then,
becomes a potent question. Does this shift engender a new way to assess our relationship
with what we see?


From the solitary flame of the humble camphor lamp to the elaborate array of tiered
beacons, a complex daily liturgy surrounds the act of worship across India’s shrines.
Amongst this panoply of rites, rituals and traditions, the most captivating aspect for
devotees within the Indic tradition has been the worship of deities, using lamps. In India,
votive lamps presented as devadanam or ‘gift to the gods,’ are an inviolable part of most
rituals. They can be found everywhere, from the abode of the humble householder, in
wayside shrines, and all the way up to the most magnificent of religious establishments.
The familiar, everyday presence of lamps has ensured that their visuality and materiality
are easily recognised, understood and absorbed. From within this comfort zone of piety
and splendour, what happens when we chance upon LN Tallur’s supercharged world of
mimesis? Recognition at first gives way to humour, as whimsy disarms even the weariest
of visitors, especially as they encounter objects that approximate a memory.


Art practices don’t exist in isolation. Artistic creations reflect an artist’s state of mind and
the many thoughts that inhabit their worlds. A recent preoccupation of Tallur’s has been
the looming influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in daily life.


As natural or human intelligence is superseded by AI, how does the creative process of
an artist interface with the challenges of machine-learnt rote that is always working away,
subconsciously? This constant process of data mining enables the creation of information
at a much faster pace, over and beyond human endeavour and possibly even our imagination. What would happen if AI were employed to create lamps, or undertake any act of
ritual or cultural production? This show, in effect, imagines a future for machine-learnt
processes that produce artefacts. The question then is — if the outer visuality of form
remains the same, do the objects remain the same? The many representations before us
are, in effect, Tallur’s speculation of what AI-enabled objects could mean in the future.
The artwork titles and the images they represent are a product of the layers of anxiety
in his mind. They also expose a disjoint between what we perceive AI to be, what it is,
and what it will likely soon be. This is not just the artist’s concern in isolation, but also
a concern voiced by others actively engaging with artificial intelligence. Elon Musk the
maverick tech tsar in 2014 worried that “…with artificial intelligence, we are summoning
the demon....”


Emerging technologies have always been a magnet for those imagining creative futures.
One question that comes to the fore is what, from the past, does one carry forward? In
material culture terms, is it the idea, the material, or the form? Does utility, relevance or
tradition play any part in the creator’s reckoning process at all? AI or the intelligence of
machines is conventionally understood as being variant to human or animal intelligence,
while functioning as a system that helps discern actions that can help achieve goals. This
unknown promise of a goal-oriented system in the future concerns Tallur. Seen here are
the many manifestations of what AI could mean in the real world. Predicating this effect
through mute, everyday objects, provokes us into contemplating real and imagined futures.
What are we to make of the terms — data mining, white space, RNN, slaughterbots, hack
geek, grey space, deep learning, chatbot, clustering, heuristics, swarm — that make up the
artwork labels? Conventionally, they would have referenced the form of easily identifiable
celestial beings. Can wood, marble, granite, bronze, iron, concrete or even a projection
screen convey light or the lamp?


Responding to an artistic brief, however, does pose a problem for the artist. The tensions
I referred to earlier are more keenly observed when we see Tallur’s desire to push a literal
idea into a realisable form. A bronze lamp representing a mythic creature is visibly similar
when broken into its constituent parts, down to its base materials. But what if the form
is maintained but the material changes? When layers of plywood in multiple veneers
simulate bronze, does AI pick up on the fake data being generated? The artist
understands this conundrum since, in the early days of his engagement with technology,
science didn’t often keep up with his creative urges, necessitating an element of handwork. This combining of hand and machine is easily understood by most Indians — a
‘human-machine product,’ a term coined by Tallur. All of what you see here is precisely
that — a human-machine product, a confluence of the possibilities of the hand and the
machine, synced to achieve a singular artistic vision.


Deepalakshmi in MAP’s collection is a strikingly disproportionate object; the oil
receptacle is outsized and its base much repaired and held up by a newer base, cast in a
different material. A deepalakshmi illuminates distinctly; alongside its upward spread of
light, its form also spreads shadows underneath. The artist views the shadow planes as a
chatbot mining away constantly, even as light ceases. It mimics a chatbot, constantly
creating and gathering more and more data, while expanding its form and almost
reaching a point where the source of light is threatened. Light and shadow as represented
here, are served by two distinct surface finishes differentiated by the marks of the hand
and tools, placed over a base that can barely keep from toppling over.


The potential of slaughterbots to change the nature of warfare was first understood in
2017, when an arms-control advocacy video took the world by storm. Swarms of
ordinary micro drones turned into killing machines as they attacked political opponents
using programmed AI technology and facial recognition software. Tallur imagines
slaughterbots in the guise of divine apparitions; their multiple hands bearing a variety
of arms to slay the demon, both within and without. Their wheeled base allows for swift
movement and the use of traditional bronze readies the object for worship, as it is
anointed with oil paint. Does the ancient form appear ominous now that we know
what it references in modern parlance? Without the benefit of this explanation, would
we have looked at the sculpture as a neutered benign divinity of the past?


The tale of a tail is embedded in all our minds as we recall sentinel beings and a beloved
character from Indian mythology. Labelling him a hack geek brings together the fluidity
of both terms. The geek as an interested enthusiast is thus contrasted with the hack, who
bears the skillset, ability and knowledge to create and modify. Thus, a bronze and
wooden hack geek while signalling the beginning of an idea, is also seen within its own
knots. The object then is a playful one; one that initiates chaos which ultimately leads
up to the creation of a mighty throne. The repetition of an idea, duplication and being
able to work with complex models is fundamental to the functioning of AI models. The
end results of an artist’s work are similar: sometimes resolved, while at other times
awaiting further fine-tuning, to become functional models.


In the evolution of Indian sculpture, cave dwellings with magnificent sculptural elements
gave way to free-standing structures in wood. These were to further evolve and were
more permanently chiselled on stone before moving to bronze. Building on these ideas
of human learning and technical advancement, AI models use deep learning to mimic a
human’s grasp of knowledge systems while attempting the same. The figure of a lady
dispensing oil into a lamp imagines volume quite differently from conventional scales
and forms, but here Tallur goes back to what the oil pourer might have looked like in an
earlier wooden avatar, though now realised in concrete. Our idea of the conventional
figure is challenged by the form of earlier incarnations, recast anew.


The usage of self-discovery or heuristic techniques to problem-solve is a practical method
intrinsic to most art practitioners. The methodology or technique used, however, is never
a guarantee of artistic success or realisation. A close enough approximation at the end
of the process of the artists’ vision is taken to be a good starting point for an outcome.
Heuristic methods in AI similarly emphasise speed over accuracy, often in combination
with optimised algorithms to improve results — a god of “wealth” — fully imagined, but
not really ready. The artwork as viewed by us is art, in reality, but the artwork is actually
in progress.


Swarm captures the work of four men ginning cotton, a process done by hand to
separate the fluffy cotton from its seed, along its journey from field to bale. Larger
operations increasingly adopt technology for the same process, but in many rural areas,
ginning is still done by hand. Viewing the process through the lens of a phantom
camera allows for high-resolution images at very high frames per second. The result is
an incredibly super-slow-moving video that heightens and creates charged drama as the
action is played out in the most mundane of acts. Rapid improvements in imaging
technology have meant that cameras now offer themselves as new tools in the creation
of art, especially for those frustrated with static forms, who seek a greater sense of
movement in their artistic practice. The men move, appear and disappear of their own
volition, performing without colliding, akin to AI’s idea of a swarm, which functions
without a central data system, but within individual coordination that outperforms to
create a single emergent intelligence. Twenty-eight minutes of Swarm is a crystal-clear
rendition in great definition and detail of the many shades of white captured, ironically,
in glorious colour.


In 2022, what does a new museum mean in terms of its role as a space for cultural
interpretation? While balancing remains from the past, it also welcomes a newer collection
of objects that fosters conversations and presents a new interface with the communities
it hopes to serve. Collusions and dissonance are therefore necessary, and the choice of
art partitioners that institutions engage with is a sign of their aspirations and a gauge of
their ability to think critically. During this process, the interpretation offered to the
public is a three-way conversation between the institution, artist and reviewer. Design,
display and context support the showcasing of art, while an enterprising interpretation
of all of the above is what the institution hopes to put out into the public realm. Every
artist is anxious for their ideas, materiality and thought processes to be captured, while
the reviewer hopes to make sense of what they see. The reality of the end consumer, the
viewer, lies somewhere in between.


In rapidly changing traditional societies like India’s, modern realities sometimes feel
meaningless, since we, as people, are not used to distancing ourselves from our
immediate environment. Older forms and shapes still resonate and Tallur imaginatively
employs these to share his preoccupations, anxieties and concerns for the future. The
changing boundaries of art and technology have allowed him to pose some of these
questions. The interpretation of this kind of artwork within new taxonomies, rules
and rituals, however, is an emerging study for the future.

Published in 2022 By Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bengaluru, a division of the Art & Photography Foundation (APF). ISBN No 978-81-957576-2-6