Best Synthetic Answer #1: Crossing (San Francisco, 37.7749° N, 122.4194° W, Hawaii, 19.8968° N, 155.5828° W, Johnston Atoll, 16.7290° N, 169.5346° W, Kingman Reef, 6.3833° N, 162.4667° W, Palmyra Atoll, 5.8886° N, 162.0822° W, Jarvis Island, 0.3748° S, 160.0167° W, Malden, 4.0167° S, 154.9167° W, Marqueses, 9.8054° S, 139.0540° W, Hao, 18.1069° S, 140.9461° W, Tahiti, 17.6509° S, 149.4260° W, Raiatea, 16.8333° S, 151.4333° W, Bora Bora, 16.5004° S, 151.7415° W, Southern Cook Islands, 21.2367° S, 159.7777° W, Niwe, 19.0544° S, 169.8672° W, American Samoa, 14.2700° S, 170.1322° W, Samoa, 13.7590° S, 172.1046° W, Tonga, 21.1790° S, 175.1982° W, Fiji, 17.7134° S, 178.0650° E, Vanuatu, 15.3767° S, 166.9592° E, Auckland, 36.8485° S, 174.7633° E, Sydney, 33.8688° S, 151.2093° E, Honiara, 9.4456° S, 159.9729° E, Santa Isabel, 8.0833° S, 159.0833° E, Nauru, 0.5228° S, 166.9315° E, Marshall Islands, 7.1315° N, 171.1845° E, Micronesia - Chuuk, 7.4463° N, 151.8500° E, Papua New Guinea Port Moresby, 9.4438° S, 147.1803° E, Torres Strait, 10.5167° S, 142.2333° E, Tanimbar Islands, 7.6667° S, 131.5667° E, Timer Liste, Dill, 8.5536° S, 125.5783° E, Jakarta, 6.2088° S, 106.8456° E, Belitung, 2.7086° S, 107.9556° E, Singapore, 1.3521° N, 103.8198° E, Brunei, 4.5353° N, 114.7277° E, Nha Trang, 12.2388° N, 109.1967° E, Manilla, 14.5995° N, 120.9842° E, Laoag, 18.1979° N, 120.5926° E, Kaohsiung, 22.6273° N, 120.3014° E, Taipei, 25.0330° N, 121.5654° E, Shanghai, 31.2304° N, 121.4737° E) The maps I read as kid could bend space to your will You could also say, that no water is neutral, nothing is pure, wear out the computer, a gateway is a protocol converter, trans is a material gateway, is visibility a trap or salvation? The history of use is becoming natural, Ahmed, Ahmed, The plastic is slowing my brain down, If I lie on my back at night I can see the stars, this whole thing is misnamed even now, Band of space where I am trying to acknowledge what has occurred and simultaneously say that I will never know and never understand, I remain a passerby enroute to somewhere else, my anger at this destruction is innate, inbuilt and quiet it is seething like animatronic ally, garish, silly , like making glass be sun water or stone, it is a very big angry and I remain inside of it and my body my mind my logic is it is outside, making work, pointing asking questions who cares if I say it, if I I saw it what was done other than witnessing in this catching nothing, stories told through a tourist, I like a fish on the current, specifically that even fish can throw the sea out of balance render render render swim west to meet the dawn swim west all to run around and meet the dawn, STANDARIZATION!!! (see language is a virus) formalism is destruction there is no uniform only endless specificity and whose specificities am I seeing today and from which did I originate, do your deer shriek when they see you, shoulder lips, rims, barrels, caps, disruptive camouflage and raccoons, no I mean anything else, spit facilitation of exchange every day has consequences fast approaching whistle stop tour of American devastation no no whistlestop tour of American devastation meddling, death mongering, stealing, bio warring, pillaging, modernizing, standardizing, looting, you call also this the how good are you at holding your breath chariots bow that’s a thing, if to be crushed be screaming I mean I imagine if I were to be crushed, I would be screaming I made it to begin. 2024 Speculative Animation (constantly generating), infinite duration, with sound, controllers, and leather sofa Overall dimensions variable Commissioned by the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai
The heart of Best Synthetic Answer is a newly commissioned video installation, Best Synthetic Answer #1: Crossing…, that simulates a real-time journey from Johnson’s birthplace—on the unceded territories of the Ohlone peoples in San Francisco—to Shanghai, China. Spanning seven months, Johnson”s avatar—the “main character” of this work—swims in real time across the Pacific Ocean, offering an immersive yet temporally unwieldy experience that attempts (and ultimately fails) to describe the immensity and multidimensionality of the Pacific specifically by following the wake of the United States’ destructive interventions.
In Best Synthetic Answer #1: Crossing…, several AI models are used to ostensibly guess the live condition of the Pacific Ocean: real-time weather data and existing freely available oceanic weather datasets to generate second-for-second theoretically “live” weather condition of the Pacific. The exhibition and its central work’s title, Best Synthetic Answer, references the outputs of large language models—like ChatGPT—which are designed to generate the optimal (best) response to any query; their responses are considered synthetic because, at least in their technological definition, they are not considered real. In this work, the artist asks, what is real, and what does it become so?
Language is a virus or Between Immerwahr and me: Hoover! As he saw it, the true problem with the economy was neither the injustice of capitalists nor the impatience of workers, but the inefficiency of objects So much time and money were wasted on things that just didn’t work Standardizing and simplifying were, in his mind, the keys to prosperity Tires must have at least 70 percent new rubber on their treads Red ink had to be a certain proportion of scarlet dye to water… A senator: The screw thread is a simple device but it ties together the whole mechanical skeleton of our civilization, or it doesn’t Setting standards on the mainland was hard work It went easier in the territories Authorities just declared standards and enforced them Fashioning a binding together, another system of base measure, set, put nonsense like A hurdle, a basket, grided, a small net, a lattice, a mesh, a net, a screw thread, on the violences of a map, of specificity and exploitation With a map of the minerals they will mine If they don’t make rules the mining happens Who gets to make that choice and who gets to suffer from it and wait why did they make that choice and what were they thinking of, what were they modeling themselves on? Empires imprinted colonies with new laws, ideas, languages, sports, military conventions, fashions, weights and measures, rules of etiquette, money and industrial practices In fact that’s what colonial officials spent much of their time doing There’s a reason, in other words, that the British measurement system (feet, yards, gallons, pounds, tons) is called the imperial system… Empires standardized people, too How do I figure out if I have been standardized can I take a quiz? This is about balance and the arrival of the passerby How’d you come to pass by anyway 91 percent of the world’s population stops at red octagons Standards make things accessible to those who hold the standard You had to colonize to standardized, roughly speaking (and with important exception) What changed in the Second World war was scale The United States took advantage of its position – as the undisputed economic and political superpower, with its wartime logistical network, installed in more than a hundred countries to push its standards beyond its borders The wave of US centered standardization that followed transcended the scale of the nation or the empire This was standardization at the scale of the planet! Great We could also say: it is broken and we won’t be fixing it Always perpetrators, and with pollution always victims, never a bride, never a bottom Could the grid be for us all? The grid is you, I mean me, I mean the translating, the reading Can a place be written? Can land have surface, like if it has such variance? What’s so different from colonialism and globalism, domination without annexation Who set the standards again Variable Just kidding we just discussed this Surface can be pierced The ocean is finite Jonathan told me it is not so vast that it cannot be imagined (Here it is right here). 2024 Reproduction Tiffany Stained glass with steel frame 4.8 × 14.8 m This work’s long title above quotes from historian Daniel Immerwahr’s book, How to Hide an Empire (2019, Random House) which considers the implications of American colonization. This work focuses on the Pacific Ocean wondering through Immerwahr’s language and the work’s material and scale” what is the use of a map you cannot read?
We realized that if we ran in one another’s foot prints we could go faster You’d go first and the way we went it was like this, you get out of the van and you smile at me, chubby cheeks and stubble and you run, long, red brown dirt, a small fissure always moving through it where water has run and stopped and run again, you keep going and the eucalyptus get taller and stronger, now I was first, and high off that, my eyes always surprised when the hills open for the sea and in this there is a muddle that’s black in my mind now, and anyways there were horses and the horses we’d pass them and we’d always switch here and I’d find your steps and your stride, just breathing not talking, I can’t stare at anything or I’d lose your footing, and if it was winter it would be green, a wobbling vibrant green like a jogging toddler or the first movements of a fin, and then you keep going and it’s my turn again and the grass gets higher and and the path narrower and I can feel my arms pumping and I move towards the burn in my legs why are you always lower somehow, you’re getting lazy, you come in front of me, you slow me down and it’s all yellow and sage and the dirt gives way to whatever sand is just before it is sand, and then you keep going and the mountains keep growing and you’re cut right between a line amongst a bunch of curves and if I didn’t stop every time to watch you I think you’d be dissatisfied, then you start to go uphill one more time, leaving the flood plane and me and that’s it, you’re there, you beat me, I lost your footsteps, and the ocean and the inland tide pools lay down at our feet like lazy cats or our most beautiful friend, bored greeting, this would be the moment we’d race to the big rock to the right, to touch it even if the tide was high, I breathed so hard and I could never catch you, sometimes you’d turn and open your arms and throw me in the ocean and then join me realizing I’d either make you freeze or you’d never be able to catch me racing back to the van and the blankets and the hot water with lemon which was so spartan but very much you and later we’d cross the mountain, to Stinson to watch our friends surf or to not do anything but wind and wind our way to the lighter sand, the inlets, the whipping sand on our faces and then once more back over the hill to watch the sun tuck itself away. 2024 Leather, watercolor, acrylic paint, bleach, wax, crayon, and colored pencil 195 × 119 cm
Best Synthetic Answer #3: Protocol Converter Prototype 2024 Mirrors and metal structure Overall dimensions variable This work uses 5 mirrors to create suncats on the opposite building at different times of day, this view is from the 5th floor window.
Each day and every second, Johnson’s avatar navigates a hyper specific pre-determined route across the Pacific, following the hubris of the nation of his birth, the United States. Every location his avatar passes through bears the marks of places the U.S. has sought to destroy, alter, or exploit, both land and people. Moving through diverse oceanic zones, the only beings Johnson encounters as he swims are the multifaceted forms of plastic debris, remnants of what he and his fellow humans have allowed to spill into the Pacific. Through Best Synthetic Answer, Johnson invites us to perceive the Pacific not merely as a known entity but as an ever-evolving series of flows and folds, waves, and depths where the artificial and real converge.
Curated by X Zhu-Nowell, Rindon Johnson: Best Synthetic Answer is part of RAM’s broader research initiative, “Complex Geographies: Into the Pacific.” The exhibition’s accompanying public program, Wan Hai Hotel (Around the Sea Hotel), inspired by Fijian-Tongan scholar Epeli Hauʻofa, encourages a rethinking of Shanghai from a “seascape epistemology” perspective. This series invites scholars, artists, performers, and musicians from the “sea of islands” to engage in activities, including performances, lectures, conferences, and workshops. As this crossing unfolds, we invite audiences to join us in experiencing and contributing to the myriad encounters of this extensive voyage.
Best Synthetic Answer #3 and a half: Protocol Converter Prototype, wanders included or use becomes natural or Employees you don’t have to pay! Or Environmentalism does not usually address colonialism and often reproduces it! Undergird! Sure! New feeling! (can’t hear it cry out?) Contrivance (Rube Goldberg Street Light) Under-commonality (inevitably the strain of our desire will break things down), a functional proposition, a system of base measure, hubris marker stain, what level can you see though, magnificent drain, silent noise, prose, yuck! Square drift Liboiron: Pollution, scientific ways to know pollution, and actions to mitigate pollution are not examples of, symptoms or metaphors for, or unintentional by-products of colonialism, but rather are essential parts of the interlocking logics (brain), mechanisms (hands and teeth), and structures (heart and bones) Colonialism is not just about taking Land, though it certainly includes taking Land Stealing is a manifestation, a symptom, a mechanism, and even a goal of colonialism But those are the teeth of colonialism, and I want to look at its bones Stealing Land and and dispossessing people are events with temporal edges, but ongoing Land theft requires maintenance and infrastructure that are not as discrete, given that “colonization is a continuing process, not simply a historical event” Colonialism is a set of specific, structured, interlocking, and overlapping relations that allow these events to occur, make sense, and even seem right (to some). 2024 Blue-green algae, BG-11 medium, glass, and pumping system Overall dimensions variable Algae was cultivated in collaboration with Associate Professor Wang Xinyu, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences This work is a proposition for a street light. In a theoretical proposition for the future of animal husbandry, his street light uses synthesized algae as its light emiting source.
Dark blue of the water, the side to side motion of the boat like take your arm and swing it from side to side like a pendulum, any body part really, your whole body side to side like a pendulum or just your head or your eyes you get the feeling, and sitting along the edges of the boat, inflated, and the pendulum gathering and the hard, industrial, rubbery, plastic seat, squishing with water, slipping, rough and smooth, and the clouds gathering in the air across the island or what I could see of it and my excitement so high and high pitched like my voice a wall of joy and feet simultaneous can you believe I dreamed it and now it is real this I the pacific and there is so much for me to know and all I have done is reflected and refracted and most people say visiting Hawai‘i was the highlight of their lives but what did they visit what did they see who made it so and the rock of the boat faster now and the whale breaching Swimming under the catamaran, the hollowness of the boat looking beath the boat the feeling of the glass, almost foggy, no definitely foggy, but the fish still visible, they moved so much more simply than on the television, like in conversation with the weather as if to say well hello, eating food next to the glass in the bottom of the boat so as to not miss anything, I did not get to drive the boat, not the boat, not the best hot dog either, hard buns and they were never very juicy and several trash cans filled with water to dunk your snorkel, your swim suit, whatever, grilled chicken with nothing on it, put some mustard on that kiddo, says my father half annoyed, half perplexed, the strips of flesh separating in my mouth, I learn later this is muscle, I like muscle but I always felt no feel empty after swimming a kind of exhaustion, I was dehydrated but then I just ate instead of realizing I was dehydrated I could have been 8 in the way I see it but who knows how do you see me, we’d eventually get to the crater which envelopes you, this is annoy phrase envelopes, but it does, it is unbelievable, the edges falling into the ocean like a broken cookie, a sudden fall, I say kind of because you can make out the rocks on the shore but never step on to land, I bet there were munitions in the crater too, I mean in the water too, but who knows now, the water had such a color, so blue and almost jewel like The top of my head has always been sensitive, My family becomes and afterwards and in that process visits Hawai‘i every year A sun shower Here’s a new one for you: we have changed the ocean the air the planet, yes but is it the center of the mile I have changed, my mother has changed, language is our liberation and my father has changed my sibling has changed, imagine trying to catch a 100 mile fast ball in the dark? And change, change is god Right change is god? I don’t know we’ve been mucking about, glasses want to be round and I don’t know if land is a woman, what do I know of land always traversing, bridge calls my back elsewhere who are we here change is god, a swam without a neck did not easily dissolve I don’t remember learning how to swim, I just did it, my mom says that’s not what happened, a black child must know how to swim, did you know all the sizes waves could be or that whales thumbprints are their tails I’d like to start tearing seams in the future, tearing a seam into the future (We are all black behind the ear) What’s the work for its falling apart, falling asleep to someone eating an apple, open your teeth, people close to me including myself spare dirt of the situation is the 1 point of language to communicate and be understood? You shout coming around the corner No stupid questions! “Bother me killjoy” OPEN YOUR TEETH, be the gift horse, copiable all together, consumptive, I was always happy to feel small as long as I knew I’d be big again, how’d I get here and what can I do with all this memory. 2024 560 35mm color positive slides This slide show alternated each month of the crossing journey, showing my family’s archive of photographs of our time in the pacific in San Francisco and Hawaii.
