Hernan Diaz Alonso talks with David Ruy and Karel Klein about their exhibition Apophenia, on view in the SCI-Arc Gallery November 17 to December 17, 2017. David Ruy begins by acknowledging the help of students, former students, fabricators, and others who made the exhibit possible.

Diaz Alonso asks if Apophenia is an exhibit or an installation, prompting a discussion of how Ruy and Klein’s ideas developed over time through different technologies and media, the contrast between the conventional presentation and the uncanny objects, the contrast between the images and the models, and the contrast between the work produced by manipulating GIS software and 3D digital painting and sculpting software and the work produced by AI.

The conversation touches on issues of the uncanny, defamiliarization, fiction versus reality, appropriation, models and miniatures as platforms for proposed new reality, and – as signaled by the project’s title – the construction of meaning.

Klein and Ruy respond to comments from the audience concerning authenticity, here-ness, image resolution, and the ambition to find a way out of media satiation toward re-enchantment.