NikuAi — Tipping Point
Reviewed by Leah Davis

Niku is “an AI art collective that explores the world via generative algorithms.” Principals Anna Buchele, Erik Strand, and Serge Vasylechko collaborated with Phillip Cherner, Valentina Perosa, and Cassandra Lee to create Tipping Point, a heady piece that tries to do a bunch of important things at once. Tipping Point is generative AI art focused on showcasing the effects of climate change. The video component of this piece features two loops. On the right, a hand is shown playing Jenga until an increasingly precarious tower topples over. On the right, AI-generated imagery shows natural wonders descending violently into chaos each time the tower fails. In the context of WaveForms 2023, this translates into a split-screen video projected onto the far wall of the Red Wing’s atrium. George Rhoads’ audiokinetic ball sculpture, Archimedean Excogitation, stands in front of a large circular window, bisecting the projection. Occasionally a silhouette blocks part of the video as somebody wanders downstairs from the Mugar Theater. I paused for a moment on those stairs myself, watching a dreamlike sequence of brown moths morph into flames as a digital forest turned to ash. These interruptions are not a bug. They work in Tipping Point’s favor, making the point that climate change is not something we can fit around the rest of our lives. We are in it. Of course, there was a physical component to the work that I found somewhat superficial: an actual Jenga game set up as an ecological allegory. Some blocks represented parts of our world that cannot be removed, like oceans. Others represented things we must reuse, things that have to be removed, or things that cannot be replaced. While I appreciate the interactive nod toward our museum setting, I think this part of the installation distracted from Niku’s more impactful video installation.