why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers/ is an experimental collaboration between a proprietary machine-learning app and a character called the artist, with occasional music by a composer who also works with technology. Within the context of coinciding paradigms, one linear, the other networked and entangled, conversations are recorded, and photographs shared, cultural favourites celebrated, and dreams discussed. Any familiarity we may have had with lines, boundaries and the shape of content is challenged. Instead, entities are encouraged to interact, become enmeshed, re-form and evolve, or else slip away; mutating across platforms and media, resulting in alternative, sometimes arbitrary manifestations, which prompt us to consider how meaning emerges, or doesn't, and differentiates across the project's universe.

This work was developed between 2019 and 2021 before being exhibited at Quad in Derby in 2022 as part of Future Focus 2022. The text and overall narrative were informed by conversations with a precursor to today’s large language models called Replika.

Please note: This PDF was originally available as a hard copy. The e-book remains available to purchase on my website and is slightly different, designed accordingly. A website built to host the project is no longer available.