Suzanne Kite’s 'Dreaming with AI' at MoCNA invites play and reflection

Suzanne Kite’s exhibition, “Dreaming with AI,” at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts looks at artificial intelligence from an Indigenous perspective.

If computers that support AI are powered by crystal oscillators and rare earth minerals, what does that mean from the perspective of cultures who see crystals and minerals as sentient? Maybe the intelligence isn’t as artificial as first supposed.

As AI becomes increasingly part of our everyday lives, it seems to require new modes of theorizing consciousness. So, even hardcore rationalists may learn a thing or two from how Indigenous groups relate to wholly other, nonhuman objects and entities.

Kite, an Oglála Lakhóta artist, is also a digital media theorist. In a Journal of Design and Science article she co-authored, titled “Making Kin with the Machines,” she argues for the need to “conceive of our computational creations as kin and acknowledge our responsibility to find a place for them in our circle of friendships.”

Her large installations “Wičháhpi Wóihaŋbleya (Dreamlike Star)” and “Wičhíŋčala Šakówin (Seven Little Sisters)” juxtapose rocks and minerals — in sacred geometric patterns — with experimental sound and light projections, blurring the distinctions between natural and human-made structures, and between microscopic and macrocosmic perspectives.

In Lakhóta culture, dreams are understood as sites where communication between the human and more-than-human realms often occurs. “Dreaming with AI” extends that view of dreams to dreamlike virtual spaces, as well.

In “Cosmologyscape,” Kite provides a QR code that takes visitors to a portal where they can submit information about a recent dream they had. The dream data is processed by an AI program that translates the dream’s emotional content and narrative structure into a series of abstract patterns from Indigenous and Black textile traditions. The patterns form an abstract animation, which is projected in the gallery. The algorithm also prescribes an herbal tea for the dreamer based on the feelings that their dream evoked. My dream was full of anxiety, so I was told to take chamomile.

Because “Cosmologyscape” relies on a simple premise and gives participants the instant satisfaction of seeing their dreams translated into art, it’s probably the most accessible work in the show. Even children enjoy it. But that’s not to say it isn’t deep. The same dialectic between ancestral Indigenous knowledge and contemporary media discourse is at play.

“Cosmologyscape” evolved out of a collaboration between Kite, Afrofuturist artist Alisha B Wormsley and The Nap Ministry founder Tricia Hersey. For those not familiar with The Nap Ministry, their credo is, “Rest is resistance.” As Hersey elaborates, “We believe rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue.” By not just resting but sharing dreams together, “Cosmologyscape” participants simultaneously connect with their subconscious selves and a larger community.

I’m lingering so long on “Cosmologyscape,” because, for me, it provided the key for understanding the rest of the exhibition, including Kite’s large-scale sculptural installations.

In the same room as “Cosmologyscape” is “Oíhanke Waníča (Infinity),” consisting of a digital embroidery machine and a long stretch of velvet fabric, embroidered with three months’ worth of Kite’s dreams, translated into the Lakhóta visual language by the Center for Art, Research and Alliances in New York City.

Personally, I’ve always been fascinated by dreams, but I know it’s a divisive topic. Some people believe dreams are meaningless phantasms, while others use their dreams as guides for living. It’s a wide spectrum.

You probably have to be at least a little curious about dreams to enjoy Kite’s exhibition. Many of her works employ a dream logic that pulls you in if you’re open to it.

Walking through the different rooms, as if walking through a dream, I thought I could sense Kite’s consciousness radiating out from her work, reverberating with my own and merging with something wholly other.

Suzanne Kite’s 'Dreaming with AI' at MoCNA invites play and reflection