R. Luke Dubois is one of the most prolific artists working at the intersection of art and code today. His recent solo exhibition, The Choice is Yours, at Bitforms Gallery which ran from Oct. 26-December 23 explored Artificial Intelligence to create interactive sculptures. Dubois used actual voting machines from the 1940s-1960s to allow the audience to cast votes in response to questions which ran the gamut from the mundane to dadaesque.

In addition to the interactive voting machines, historical voting paraphernalia gives context to the work. Dubois originallythought he would hack the machines to create music boxes, but then decided to honor the original purpose of the machines and create a piece about decisions and voting. Each of the five different"With these machines Dubois has essentially created multimedia instruments" machines creates a different experience. One draws material from Clinton and Trump commercials and results in a one-minute video, while another scrapes text from Russolo’s Art of Noise to create a personalized piece of sound art. Each machine is not simply programmed to create the same response from the same input, they learned patterns of inputs and adjusted output throughout the course of the exhibition.

The input itself is fascinating; instead of using the electrical signals to represent the mechanical impulses originally used to create the “vote” Dubois had to use computer vision and florescent nail polish to read the input. With these machines Dubois has essentially created multimedia instruments that you play by making decisions. All art-making is essentially decision making, The Choice is Yours focuses the viewer/deciders attention on this task, and rewards the participant with algorithmically generated art.

Margaret Anne Schedel
R. Luke Dubois
arts.codes Vol 0
January 12th 20017