Siobhan Loates Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, I was moving countries from an early age. Much of my childhood was spent in the Middle East and later England for boarding school. Living in between cultures and diverse landscapes has heavily influenced my work. I have settled in rural Gloucestershire, UK, where I use my practise to respond to my surroundings, mainly through photography, film and print making.
Siobhan’s work explores the relationship between landscape and technology. She uses digital media as her creative source material to interpret the evolving dynamics between our biological and technological surroundings. She encourages deliberate glitches within the digital material that she works with creating a metaphor for the disruptions and uncertainties that we face within the era of ecocide.
By subjecting these glitched source materials to AI systems, Siobhan's work underscores a crucial point: the intelligence of AI systems is intrinsically tied to the quality and diversity of the data they are exposed to. Through this process, she prompts viewers to question the role and limitations of AI in deciphering and creating meaning from seemingly nonsensical inputs, mirroring how human beings also grapple with making sense of abstract concepts. Central to her work is the concept of narrative formation; with the repetition of stories and histories, we construct our own understandings of the world. Siobhan’s artwork seeks to question the assumed versions of reality that we take for granted and the many conflicting narratives presented to us throughout the digital world - highlighting the importance of critical thinking and a deeper understanding of the information we encounter.
The landscapes depicted in Siobhan's work have a futuristic quality; envisioning a post-human world where the boundaries between the biological and technological have blurred. It looks at the intricate relationships between organic and artificial networks and how these can be seen as similar systems. These landscapes offer a paradoxically eerie yet familiar vision of what the future might hold, inviting viewers to contemplate the potential outcomes of humanity's increasingly symbiotic relationship with technology.
