“Artificial Fantasy” creates the setting for a fictional fantasy video game. In the process, the transference of the self into the digital experiential space characterized by a hero’s journey is examined for its potential to unfold self-efficacy.

Using a variety of media Marwan is constructing a stage-like environment in which she explores the significance of fantasy role-playing for creating self-empowerment in times where multiple crisis trigger disorientation within the real world.

The central piece of the show, resembling the character-editor of a video game, is the „Self Portrait As A Knight“; a picture that has been created using nothing but artificial intelligence by training neural networks to represent Marwan herself.

Marwan’s exhibition invites a thought experiment, what if the generic, the virtual space, positively drives our Paleolithic brain10 instead of overpoweringly suppressing it? What if humans, technology, and nonhumans existed in a true symbiosis, or as Yuk Hui would say, prosthesis11? Marwan’s exhibition is a reminder that while symbiosis means dependency, in biology all participants derive a benefit from the community.

In this sense, goodbye then. Be safe, friend. Don’t you dare go hollow.

Don’t You Dare Go Hollow

In her solo exhibition “Artificial Fantasy” Linda Marwan stages a backdrop that works with various elements of fantasy video games. On the walls we see large, atmospheric paintings. They show a ruinous vault; a castle in the last twilight; dense arching forest and a portal in the landscape, which could lead to a loading screen. The paintings, partly held up by stones, are neighboring sculptures that, as imprints of the artist’s body, become dwellings of dragons, beetles, mythical creatures. The human body becomes armor, the armor becomes animal, boundaries blur, symbiotic realities open up. Miniature knights, hidden as Easter Eggs, the exhibition seems to direct us in a loose but thoroughly staged dramaturgy.

Further, a photographic self-portrait of Marwan as a knight, as if she were in the character editor of a computer game. We find ourselves in a fantastic world, as if it could come from a Fantasy RPG or the backstage of a theater.

In the second view: Decay, Uncanny Valley. “Elven Forest” shows diffuse ramifications, growing into nothingness, floating or exchanging sky and ground. In “Flooded Dungeon” the above-mentioned Valley is already a bit more subtle: perhaps the staircase alignment is not right, and what are these perspectives going into the distance in this actually interior space? Picturesque ductus? The Uncanny Valley, the creepy ditch, describes the effect that human-like artificial figures from a higher human likeness, suddenly appear uncanny to the viewer1. Self-portrait as a knight: from a distance a photo, human resemblance – high. Looked at closely: perhaps the fingers are a bit peculiar, but certainly it is difficult to claim. The eyes already widen the trench a bit more, but is that already enough for the above-mentioned uncanniness to break in?

Intellectually, the fuzzy feeling only dissolves somewhat with the knowledge that the artist used text to image artificial intelligence to create her painting templates. The self-portrait as a knight was also created in a multi-step process using the open source tool Stable Diffusion, which included training a model to look like Linda Marwan. We could speculate about prompts, far away castle in the evening light; post-apocalyptic dungeon, water on the ground, reflections, volumetric lighting, in the style of…

What we see is the product of the AI trained on several billion images, filtered through Marwan’s text input. A search of a 2019 painting by the artist on haveibeentrained.com2 reveals that her own painting, dating back four years, is in the data; ergo, may have been (or is?) involved in the creation of the paintings that are now part of „Artificial Fantasy“. Another person in the data set is Greg Rutkowski, a Polish illustrator who worked for fantasy video games like Horizon Forbidden West. The prompt “by Greg Rutkowski” became one of the most used for various text-to-image generators through network effects, as it was particularly effective in creating a specific illustrative style, a dreamy atmosphere. Greg Rutkowski, however, expressed reservations for various reasons, demanded restrictions4. A quick search on Reddit revealed that if you want to continue to create a similar style, you could instead use his presumed inspirations Simon Bisley and Frank Frazetta.

Linda Marwan deals, among other things, with the generic, the diverse elements of the exhibition refer to places, figures, objects and their possible connections. It is the possibility space of a hero’s journey. The kitschy stylization as the hero of one’s own story seems like the pathetic post-adolescent attempt to never grow up, but arises from serious feelings of powerlessness. Feelings of powerlessness in the face of a reality in which not only devil-may-care boomers harm the nonhumans5, whom Marwan tries to create a symbolic shelter for in her sculptures. Daniel Illger writes about Fantasy Gaming: “…we are dealing with a genre that does not allow itself to be driven out of the dream of a better world, no matter how naive, kitschy and apolitical it may be. Whereby one could perhaps say that the fact of clinging to this longing is in itself political, if it takes place in a time that misses an utopia and is as positivistic as ours “6.

Googling “hardest computer game” opens up some top lists, the “Dark Souls” series from Japanese developers FromSoftware is on most of them. A game that also kept Linda Marwan busy for quite some time. Further research on that very title yields dozens of YouTube videos, blog posts or testimonials with titles like: “Dark Souls Saved Me” – “Dark Souls and Depression” “How Souls Games Save You”, et cetera. Reports of constant failure at the same bosses over and over again, of giving up and trying again follow. In the first part of the triology, one of the non-player characters delivers a message that has become a kind of motto in the community: “Goodbye then. Be safe, friend. Don’t you dare go hollow.”.

This instruction not to become hollow refers to the avatar being cursed with the dark sign – the curse to be constantly revived anew, a process in which, with every death, a part of humanity is lost. While the death-rebirth cicle in Dark Souls is inevitable, the NPCs comment states it as a matter of choice whether the undead curse drives us into becoming a madness driven empty shell, if we loose our humanity along the way or not.

Dark Souls has a special game mechanic in terms of game progress and death. Campfires serve as storage and healing sites where players are resurrected after dying, but they lose all their souls (which can be used to strengthen their avatar). However, they can regain their souls if they manage to visit the place of their death without dying again. Combined with other (e.g. an enormously reduced multiplayer mode) mechanics, this encourages constantly trying again and learning from the mistakes already made. An analyzing YouTube video assumes among other things in these mechanics the positive psychological effect7. The player receives an internal conviction of control8, since Dark Souls does not have any system to simplify the progress (like in other games a dynamic adjustment of the difficulty) – so every progress is definite and finally self-made. What remains is an experience of self-efficacy.

What is particularly interesting about the confluence of fantasy gaming and AI is their potential real- world counterparts. Technology ethicist Tristan Harris frequently cites social media as humanity’s first mass encounter with AI; he speaks of supercomputers being directed at our brains9. Contemporary social media are manipulatively highly evoked algorithmic spaces whose main task is to engage our brains as long and intensely as possible. Side effects: Doomscrolling, echo chambers, fake news, reproduction or reinforcement of already existing prejudices and discriminations, increasing suicide rates of teenagers – et cetera. Here we can recall the effects of the fantasy classic Dark Souls introduced above; effects of self-empowerment.

Marwan’s exhibition invites a thought experiment, what if the generic, the virtual space, positively drives our Paleolithic brain10 instead of overpoweringly suppressing it? What if humans, technology, and nonhumans existed in a true symbiosis, or as Yuk Hui would say, prosthesis11? Marwan’s exhibition is a reminder that while symbiosis means dependency, in biology all participants derive a benefit from the community.

In this sense, goodbye then. Be safe, friend. Don’t you dare go hollow.

— Fabian Hampel