While the temptation of Frankenstein is two hundred years old, the wonderful generative-adversarial networks have existed for barely eight, but the euphoria of their success is no less. However, two hundred years ago Mary Shelley, despite the romantic sensuality of her work, is not talking about “a new breed of people” (this arose only thanks to a Soviet translator). In the English original the author speaks of a new species in principle – a new species of goodness knows what. Who are they, the works of Frankenstein’s hands: people, living beings, robots, angels, demons? What if a neural network were to make them? In that case, they would definitely lack human qualities.

In the works on show at this exhibition, Ivan Plusch has added to the creations of the neural network and by so doing seems to be trying on the fig leaf. The botanical pun covers up the generative act of comprehension, the need for which is caused by machine singularity – by its, as people would say, unconsciousness, or rather, – by its inhumanity. The neural network cannot comprehend – machine processing erases the meanings of all components of the Universe. After singularity, one cannot find any meaning, anything signified that existed before it. For a creature in a world without a past, the only things available are visual sensations and images without words.

Plusch uses the canvas to shield the viewer from the sheer meaninglessness – that which the new Adam sees. As is well known, Adam, seeing the world which was not generated by himself, gives names to the creatures inhabiting the world at the behest of the Creator, “…and brought them unto Adam to see what he would name them…” (Gen. 2:19). The viewer does the same when looking at these works. His mission is to endow with meaning the unnamed objects brought into the exhibition hall by the artist. Just as the biblical God needs a human to name things, so does a euphoric neuron need the New Adam at Plusch’s behest.

Let’s take a closer look at that which is inhuman. The machine is like a mother who gives birth to neither a son nor a daughter – but to a nameless and unknown creature. However, for the viewer interpreting this generative act, whose brain is wired to categorise and name things, the creature turns out to be quite intelligent and possibly even emotionally alive. The viewer, as the one who perceives the machine-born creature, must inevitably become its first interpreter and, therefore, – its father. He has an aversion to the inhuman – it troubles his brain and makes his temples ache. In the words of the poet Dmitry Garichev:

as the plank that was not broken, but only bent and unbent,
so did she hold it at her temple, but did not dare to explain herself.

It’s not that the mother-machine does not want to explain itself – it cannot. Therefore, the new-born creature aims at its father’s temple, twisting his brain. Unravelling this mental umbilical cord is the act of naming. Only by identifying with the machine and the partial erasure of his human nature does the viewer become the father. Only in this way is the genesis of the future civilisation possible after singularity.

Being unable to cope with this aching and alluring inhumanity, Adam abruptly loses in himself the qualities of the old world and becomes, unbeknown to himself, the subject of a new fusion. The artist implies that the meanings in the world after singularity are not so easy to distinguish in their manifestations from the meanings of the past, irretrievably lost as a result of the generative act of the machine: the sun still illuminates material forms, you still need to open the windows to air the gallery, but the viewer is no longer there, the machine has apprehended him, taken him for itself and under a new name included him in the metaverse. Like Eve from the rib and Dionysus from the thigh, the machine-born creature inevitably turns out to be a source of euphoria and temptation:

... we went along in brightly-lit and stuffy
buses without men, but that was as it should have been

Since there are no men in the brightly-lit bus, only the necessary creatures remain. Thus, besides them, there is no-one to name things. The meanings in such a post-singularity transport of life appear only when the New Adam lies with the neuron-generated Eve. The viewer, looking at Ivan Plusch’s works in the exhibition hall, becomes embroiled, without knowing it, in the process of writing a new Book of Genesis.

- What should I call it? – the artist thought. – Well, anything you like. After all, no one knows who I am. Meaning: why am I here? Who am I anyway? Then it’s best to say it thus: “A book about a woman”. – Now, that’s something!” – the woman suddenly exclaimed in delight.¹

¹ The last paragraph was generated by the Yandex Balaboba neural network (https://yandex.ru/lab/yalm) based on the text above, written (to use a fashionable expression) by a protein author. Yandex warns, “The neural network does not know what it is saying and can say anything – in any case, do not be offended. When distributing the resulting texts, remember the responsibility entailed”. To the person who wrote the first part of the text it seems that the phrase “in any case” includes not only bewilderment from a somewhat unexpected change in style, but also from an equally sharp, albeit not apparent, difference in meaning between the preceding text and the machine-generated paragraph. This difference is intended to evoke in the reader the same feelings experienced by the viewer of Ivan Plusch’s works. However, the Yandex warning does not indicate whose responsibility it is. Is it the responsibility of the creator? The viewer? The reader? The machine itself?