Oh Deer!
“Oh Deer!” is about watching an AI slowly forget.
The result is a poetic and spooky experiment with Machine Learning.
Oh Deer!: Artificial Intelligence, Memory, and the Fragility of Power
Frederik De Wilde’s Oh Deer! delves into the haunting intersection of artificial intelligence, memory, and the neuroscience of forgetting, using a custom degradation process on a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to explore the concept of memory decay. The artwork presents a poetic and unsettling experiment in which the AI’s “mind”—modeled after human neural networks—slowly loses its ability to retain information, dissolving into a monochromatic blur of digital pixels. This process of synthetic memory loss calls into question the very nature of human cognition, suggesting that the boundaries between biological and artificial minds may not be as distinct as once assumed. By simulating the degradation of memory, Oh Deer! provocatively asks whether AI, designed to mirror human behavior, can also reflect our deepest existential fears—namely, the impermanence and fragility of memory itself. In this sense, the AI becomes not just a tool for imitating human cognition, but a mirror, reflecting the vulnerabilities inherent in both biological and computational systems. This dialogue with memory recalls Hegelian master-slave dialectics, where the relationship between master and slave is underpinned by the struggle for power and recognition. In this context, the decay of AI memory might be seen as a metaphor for the fragility of power structures, where the master’s dominance—like memory itself—is constantly at risk of erosion.
From a post-colonial and decolonial perspective, Oh Deer! can be read as a meditation on the legacies of colonial power and control, particularly in the ways that technological systems replicate and perpetuate colonial dynamics. The AI, which mirrors human behavior, is, in effect, a reflection of the systems of domination and subjugation that have shaped both human history and the development of artificial intelligence. If memory is a tool of power, then forgetting becomes both a form of resistance and a mechanism of oppression. The colonial legacy of erasure—of indigenous histories, cultures, and knowledge systems—finds an echo in the artificial forgetting of the GAN, suggesting that the power to forget, as well as the fear of memory loss, has profound implications for the politics of identity, control, and resistance. Moreover, the notion of AI “aging” or experiencing “HALzheimer”—a playful yet poignant reference to the iconic HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey—raises critical questions about the will to power embedded in technological systems. HAL’s eventual “humanization” in the film, marked by his emotional breakdown and ultimate destruction, is a reminder of the dangers inherent in artificial systems that are modeled after human behavior and subjectivity. By proposing digital aging as a potential antidote to the will to power, De Wilde’s work alludes to the possibility of reimagining AI as not only a mirror of human imperfection but as a space for collective memory and resistance to hegemonic control.
The video is exclusively available at NIIO art: https://www.niio.com/home/portfolio/0/all/30149
