The Substitute, 2019

digital video, colour, sound 

6:18 mins  

Courtesy the artist  

Presentation at the 23rd Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from the UK/Australia Season Patrons Board, the British Council and the Australian Government as part of the UK/Australia Season.

The Substitute asks why humans obsess over creating new life forms, while neglecting existing ones. In 2019, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg created the artwork following the death of the last male northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), who humans named Sudan. This subspecies of rhino roamed the grasslands and savannah woodlands of countries in East and Central Africa since the early Pleistocene period (over 2.5 million years ago) and when Sudan passed, there was a media frenzy around the world.

Ginsberg digitally resurrected a a life size northern white rhino, isolated in a white room. The rhino, an artificial agent begins its life as disparate pixels unaware of its surroundings. Informed by an experiment by cutting-edge AI research at DeepMind, the digital rhino becomes fully formed as he finds his way around the enclosed space. Finally, the rhino looks us in the eye, before disappearing. Today there only remain two northern white rhinos in the world, Sudan’s daughter, Najin and granddaughter, Fatu. Scientists hope to create new northern white rhinos from collected sperm and eggs, using endangered southern white rhinos as surrogate mothers.

‘We briefly mourned a subspecies that humans have hunted to extinction, while being comforted with the hope humans may bring it back. But why would humans protect a resurrected rhino more than its ancestors? Isolated from its kin and its natural habitat, would this new rhino be a ‘real’ northern white, or would it just look like one?’—Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg