BLISS

MITI RUANGKRITYA PROBES INTO THE BIRTH, DEATH, AND RESURRECTION OF IMAGES FROM THE HAND OF HUMAN BEINGS OR AI, TAINTED WITH BIASES ALIKE

TEXT: PRATCHAYAPOL LERTWICHA
PHOTO: KETSIREE WONGWAN

(For Thai, press here)

It was a bright, sunny day with a clear, lovely sky in the month of January 1996. Charles O’Rear, the now-former National Geographic photographer, was traveling from his house in St. Helena, California, to visit his girlfriend, as he did every weekend. He passed across sloping green terrain on his journey and decided to get out his camera and capture the moment, struck by the beauty of the landscape.

The story marks the genesis of Bliss, Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system’s iconic default computer wallpaper that looks just like what a wonderland would be.

The claim that Bliss is one of the most seen photos in the world does not appear to be an exaggeration given that it has found its way onto the computer screens of every Windows XP user on the planet. Despite being the default picture that everyone who used Microsoft’s Windows XP would have seen at least once, Windows XP has become one of the old operating systems that people have moved on from over time in a world that has experienced continual leaps of technological innovation.

As the memory of Bliss faded, Microsoft revived it in 2021 by adopting it as the background of their Microsoft Teams software. The image was regenerated using the original Bliss wallpaper as a reference.

A picture is created, exists, fades from people’s minds, then is resurrected. Miti Ruangkritya’s exhibition, BLISS, used Charles O’Rear’s Bliss as the starting point for his own alchemy to explore and illustrate the phenomena underlying the life and death of the famous image.

The exhibition begins with BLISS 3D (2023), a piece that depicts the rotating three-dimensional letters ‘BLISS’ on the screen of an iPhone 6. This particular model of iPhone was released the same year that Microsoft ceased its development of Windows XP, leaving Bliss to become nothing more than a memory.

Across the room are photographs taken by American photographer Walker Evans titled Sharecropper’s Grave in Hale County, Alabama (1936). Although the harsh and distressing time that Hale County in Alabama once endured no longer exists, Miti downloaded the photos from the Library of Congress’ online database, printed them out, and framed them before displaying them on the exhibition room’s wall. The artist’s intervention allowed the photographs to bring back the deaths of people who suffered and died as a result of the Great Depression.

The following work is Sunset Sunrise Overture (2023), a video piece that projects a green, pristine grass hill environment akin to ‘Bliss.’ On one side, drawn-out footage of the sun rising is being shown, with moving images of the sun setting displayed on the other. The sky lights up brightly when the sun completely rises, showing clear details of the landscape. In the other video, as the sun sets, everything gets darker as the loss of light gradually drowns out visibility. The two videos are installed to face each other, an attempt by Miti to rearrange nature and convey a message to the audience, who are now trapped in the middle, about how the things one sees in an image may reappear and disappear.

The green grass hill seen in the videos featured in Sunset Sunrise Overture (2023) is given the leading role with recurring presence in its photographic form in other parts of the exhibition. The landscape possesses such a surreal kind of beauty that has most people thinking that it’s a rendered image. The photo is actually the result of multiple layers of editing. The first layer was the people who kept the grass nicely cut and took the trash out, who revealed themselves in the artist’s, ‘A worker spraying golf green during sunset’ (2022) series. The second  is the artist who retouched the image and touched up all the details using his computer program of choice.

These pictures of this ideally beautiful landscape invite us to dive further to see the handiwork of humans, their attempts to intervene, control and direct the nature that was captured in the photograph. These processes make those grass hills come to life. Miti’s attempt to repeatedly take the photo at different periods of time, which led to multiple images being created, unveiled an ambition to store the perfect beauty of nature, to freeze whatever life or spirit it possesses, in varying forms, from printed images or in the digital format that can be shown on a computer screen. But if nature were to be recorded and saved over and over again, and if such a repetition is being portrayed, will the nature that the image depicts be able to hold its values, or will those values eventually become perishable and worthless?

Miti creates a space for AI to have a role in the exhibition. With Variations of a Hill op.1 (2022), Miti transformed the Bliss image into a message with the help of AI, which then converted the message back into its image form. The artist repeated the process 90 times until Bliss gradually turned into an arid desert with a figure that looks like a human walking out of the frame. In the opposite room, Variations of a Hill op.2 (2022) is installed. Miti’s voice reciting the 90 AI-generated messages could be heard. To call it Miti’s voice wouldn’t be entirely correct since it’s a synthetic sound created also by AI. The two works demonstrate the role of AI and Miti, who both ended the existence of whatever life that Bliss used to have, before it was reborn in the forms of desiccated desert, a voice and written messages.

Taking a similar approach, ‘A worker spraying golf green during sunset’ (2022) series disclosed the behind the scenes of the attempt to control and polish the immaculate landscape. Variations of an Erosion op.1 (2022) reveals how AI isn’t a bias-free tool for the people who are behind its operation. With this particular work, Miti transcribed Erosion near Oxford by Walker Evans into written form, before reversing the process and turning the message into an image again, all using AI technology. From a black and white image of eroded hill, the image was rendered with stripe pattern that looks like that on a zebra. Then a woman wearing little clothes appeared, before turning into what looks like a stained-glass pattern. It’s worth questioning why the colored woman depicted wore such few pieces of clothing. Are there specific sets of data behind the way AI generates results, for instance, one that chooses to depict a woman of color as a sexual object?

In the same room where Variations of an Erosion op.1 (2022) was being displayed, upbeat electronic music suddenly began playing as the light went out. The music could be heard for a brief moment before it stopped. The music was actually a modified version of one of the songs by Pinkpantheress, a contemporary British artist who rose to fame on Tiktok and is known for his short compositions that references sounds of British pop music in the 2000s. While the past is in the past, the music archives and brings memories back to life, just like photographs. But once the song stopped, that lingering nostalgia faded away as the surrounding went back to normal.

On the opposite side of the room was an image of band NewJeans. The members were pointing and looking at the famous ‘Bliss’ image inside a window frame. NewJeans is an up-and-coming K-POP group whose image has been obviously influenced by the Y2K era. If Bliss keeps the enchanting green grass hills alive, NewJeans is the one who brings back the glory of Y2K back to the world. K-POP is the industry known for its grueling competition. With new songs and new bands emerging, older bands lose popularity and songs get forgotten. Artists could skyrocket to fame, but the tide of change and unmerciful competition could turn them into nothing but fading memories. Just like what happened to Bliss.

While incidents and impressive moments captured in pictures appear to be able to last through the test of time, what BLISS is asking us to see is the fragility of an image, how it could have been lost, or edited to the point that it loses the originality with the hand of human beings or AI, tainted with biases alike. People are still relentless in capturing and keeping moments. Workers work to keep the grass neatly cut so the grass hills remain perfect no matter what, and we keep on documenting it. We upload our memories on the Internet, choose some to be printed and framed. If what is in an image can fade away, it can may as well stay and be born again.

BLISS is now showing at Art Centre, Silpakorn University, from April 28th to July 8th, 2023.

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