Practice Researchers in Residence

Island fabrication: A. Jones Joinery and Christina Peake

Sculpture development supported by the University of Westminster

In dedication and loving memory of my grandmother Jocelyn Lowe, 1936-2023.

With thanks to Joshua Eyles-Peake, Margaret and William Peake, Thomas J Price, Kwame Boateng and Majdouline Elhichou; Meghan Backhouse, Alex Blakeborough, Marion Servat-Fredericq, Global Cultures Curatorial team, World Museum (Liverpool); Adiva Lawrence, Anna Ruchalska-Pineda and the Curatorial team, Lois South and the Learning and Participation team, International Slavery Museum (Liverpool); William Schupbach and Angela Sawad, Curatorial team, Wellcome Collection; Kaitlene Koranteng, Iniva; Nicola Heald and Moira Lindsay, British Council; Prof. Roshini Kempadoo, Eloise Worrall-Bader, Heidi Kinman, and Katie Woods, University of Westminster; Kevin Searle, The National Archives; Rachael Minott, Wellcome Collection; Adam Jones, Ricky Bunton, Julian Martinez and the team at A. Jones Joinery for their support in the fabrication of the island.

Ancestral (R)evocations is a series of sonic and visual elements brought together within the format of a presentation or event which ‘sounds’ the archive as a method of evocation, diagnosis and making of kin. This is an act of bringing forth or recalling a feeling, memory or image to mind; an invoking of presence to what might nominally be considered invisible, silent, inert and lacking agency. It is the search for kinship, for lost loves, the summoning of those that have been marooned, bereft of companionship, and to pay homage to those that have gone before us. It is also an act of interrogation, a diagnostic probing into the depths of museal collections, processes and their current states of ‘health and well-being’.

Working within and between the realms of art and medical history, Ancestral (R)evocations gathers and scrapes collections data referencing ‘Southeast Asia’ from British institutions (in this case, Tate and the Wellcome Collection) to bring together forms of computational processes and human–computer collaboration where data, digitised and physical materials, speculation and generative processes, distributed kinship and connections create a series of loosely subjective and firmly indexical sound and image events. Here the potentials and pitfalls of AI and machine learning (ML) in relation to collections data and national collections connects the project to the broader Transforming Collections project of which it is a part, which responds to research questions around bias within museum collections and interpretation. Here the potentials of AI and ML to amplify or continue patterns, or to indeed help identify such patterns within collections data, across multiple collections sites, was an underlying question to return to. The process of cross-institutional data use is fraught with issues of formatting, transparency, access, human labour, processes of redaction and so on, and when that is all overcome and finally the ‘cleaned’ data is with you, the daunting question arises: Whose voice, or what agency, what kind of knowledge is produced, what patterns are highlighted, what exactly is being invoked here, or recalled?

AI and ML are the latest in a lineage of technology that can be put to work on maintaining and extending museal control over objects within collections, but they are also presented as tools that we might use to interrogate these very same spaces. As with all tools, AI and ML inherit cultural and political biases; this practice research project explores how these tools might be used relationally to produce ways we might bring forth agency or presence within the collection data, through sound, sonification, subjectivity, call and response.

Ancestral (R)evocations attests to my interest in exploring the commonalities and dissonances between collections that were developed as a testament to processes related to science and health and those related to art and art histories. Sounding, singing and voicing in the absence of materials is also of interest, and the project uses the gaps in the archives and collections, as well as metaphors of illness and health, absence and presence, representation (Southeast Asian diaspora) and return, revisiting/restitution (Southeast Asian objects).

One of the central protagonists in the work is the ‘Diagnostic Instrument’, built as a prototype capable of sonifying the Southeast Asian collections data through the triggering of sounds made with fragmented elements of my own familial collection of instruments from the region. The other protagonists are the physical buildings of Tate and Wellcome, the structures that house, hold and keep institutional histories, objects, peoples, processes and stories – and that sonically become the location of reverberations generated through the process of the Diagnostic Instrument’s visitations to these sites. Alongside these, data and structure are also protagonists. Here the work of Kim Lim (Sphinx, 1959, T15938), David Medalla (Sand Machine Bahag – Hari Trance #1,1963–2015, T15371) and Vong Phaophanit (Neon Rice Field, 1993, T14130) all in the Tate collection and on display during the filming of Sounding the Archives (title tbc), are talismanic touchstones for the artist and performer Noel Ed De Leon, filmmaker and artist Chanthila Phaophanit, and myself, as the artist and practice researcher, who also appear in the video element of Ancestral (R)evocations.

Video work

Direction & Editing: Erika Tan

Camera and Sound: Chanthila Phaophanit, Cuan Roche, Turab Shah

Performers: Noel Ed De Leon, Chanthila Phaophanit, Erika Tan

Filming Support: Ariel Haviland (Tate), William Schubach, Orla O’Donnell and Julia Nurse (Wellcome Collection)

Diagnostic Instruments and live binary sematic ML sounds (Museum Feedback & Ancestral (R)evocations)

Technical Production & Installation, Software Development, Machine Learning (sound design): Daniel Hearn

Design Engineer (instruments): Daniele Di Paolo

Sound Design (Museum Feedback & Ancestral (R)evocations): Garin Curtis & Daniel Manz

Software Development: Luke Plowden

Creative Technologist: Hannah Petter

Installation Technician: Rosie Walker

LED signage text: Text selection and edit, Erika Tan; Text sourced from Tate and Wellcome Collection artefact descriptions.

With thanks to collaborators, creative technologists, artists, supporters: who have helped make this work possible: Daniel Hearn, Daniele Di Paolo, Garin Curtis & Daniel Manz, Luke Plowden, Hannah Petter, Rosie Walker, Polo Sologub, George Meadows, Lexin Zhou, Vong Phaophanit, Claire Oboussier, Chanthila Phaophanit, Cuan Roche, Turab Shah, Noel Ed De Leon, Adam Nankervis, Daniel Kupferberg, Anthony Lam, Nathaniel Tan Lam and the staff teams of Wellcome Collection, Tate, Creative Computing Institute and Decolonising Arts Institution.

How We Are Where We Are

Expanding further upon my long-term interest in industrial history and its inextricable link with British identity, I am exploring collections from the Walker Art Gallery​ in Liverpool​, Manchester Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and Tate Britain. As part of the Transforming Collections practice research residency, I began the project by tracing the histories of art museums in the most important industrial cities of nineteenth-century Britain:​​ Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London. This period was marked by immense industrial development, economic progress and imperial expansion, which fundamentally transformed the nation and continues to have a lasting impact on contemporary life today.

I am interested in the social relations and power dynamics that shaped these museums – a mix of public and private, civic and individual – driven by Victorian ideas about the role of art in reforming society. These museums were created as models for improving industrial design and working-class behaviour, with the pursuit of beauty intended ​​​​‘to rectify the moral and physical ugliness of industrial capitalism’¹. I have been investigating the entangled relationship between art and industry, and their often-overlooked connection with empire. Specifically, I am focusing on how these entanglements manifest in museum spaces.

These spaces, encompassing both physical architecture and intangible systems of collecting and interpreting, have been carefully and deliberately constructed to tell stories and direct specific perspectives. My project aims to shed light not just on what we see, but also how we perceive museum collections and narratives. This new work asks how we navigate in and around these spaces as a way to begin addressing decolonial practices. It also examines how we recognise celebrations of white superiority and naturalising Western imperialism that are still deeply embedded in our museums today.

Working closely with the curators from these museums and Creative Computing Institute data scientists, I am creating a machine learning dataset using photographs of collections I have taken during the residency. Unlike typical images found in museum databases, these pictures capture collection items in context, in relation to other objects, the surrounding gallery settings and architectural space. The approach, coupled with textual analysis and data labelling based on my personal experience of seeing and navigating, aims to unravel layers of constructs shaping museum spaces and narratives. This image-focused dataset will offer a great opportunity to test the potential of training algorithms to identify language patterns and visual representations that have long privileged whiteness and that continue to perpetuate colonial perspectives and exclusionary practices.

I am creating an architectural and theatrical intervention within Tate Modern’s South Tanks. Resembling theatre sets, this installation combines suspended wooden structures, painted fabric backdrops, floor drawings, sculptural props, lighting, sounds and multilayered projections to spatially evoke speculative museum environments. Audiences are encouraged to become more attuned to various embedded visual tropes, consider how they interact with the work and navigate spaces. The audiences’ movements and experiences, both individually and collectively, will help to activate multiple perspectives and contribute to the completion of the installation. The work at Tate Modern will serve as a blueprint for a series of evolving exhibitions at the Walker Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2025 and beyond.