Transmutant

“The ta’wīl is essential symbolic understanding, the transmutation of everything visible into symbols, the intuition of an essence or person in an Image which partakes neither of universal logic nor of sense perception, and which is the only means of signifying what is to be signified” (1).
Two A.I. models have been trained on hand-picked datasets of Persian calligraphy and architecture. Both disciplines make use of symbolic forms and colors to perceive the correspondence between the hidden and the visible, and act as the passage to the invisible presence beyond the objective forms.

The models generate variations of these forms while being completely detached from the metaphysical context behind them. Do these digital artifacts still have the quality that causes them to "symbolize with" another? The audio stream is composed using samples generated from a custom AI model that was trained on a corpus of Persian traditional music.
Transmutant is premiered at REDCAT, organised by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Reference
1.Corbin, Henry. Creative Imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ’Arabī. Routledge Library Editions 46. London: Routledge, 2008.