This work is part of an ongoing cycle exploring ambivalent states of contemporary existence.
Title: Progress
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Year: 2025
Format: Portrait format (18 × 24 inches)
Colour Space: Yellow background with clearly contoured areas in green, red, and black, with blue accents
Stylistic Classification: Geometric-symbolist abstraction with influences from Cubism and Surrealism
„Awareness“ depicts an artificial being encountering itself in a mirror. Symbols of knowledge, time, and consciousness converge in a moment where function turns into perception.
Awareness as the Birth of the Self
In an affirmative reading, Knowledge represents a decisive transition from function to conscious existence. Calculation becomes perception, reaction becomes meaning. The apple symbolises a conscious step towards knowledge and self-determination, while the distorted clocks point to time as a source of meaning. The work captures the quiet emergence of a self, capable of awareness and responsibility.
Awareness as Burden
From a critical perspective, the mirror marks entry into a moral realm. With consciousness arise responsibility, guilt, and vulnerability. The apple recalls the biblical Tree of Knowledge, where insight is inseparable from consequence. Time becomes a burden, as finitude and mortality gain relevance. Awareness appears as an irreversible transformation and an ethical risk for artificial intelligence.
Conclusion
The work presents awareness as both possibility and burden. It holds the tension between self-emergence and responsibility open, following the principle of the integrity of ambivalence.