Back to overview

Exhibition

MENSCH MASCHINE

Friday
14
February 2020

Extra information

Wednesday 05 February the Gallery will exceptionally be closed at 5pm.

OPENING: WEDNESDAY 15.01.20 18:00-21:00

The exhibition Mensch Maschine is touching on elements of machine learning fundaments: the feed, the successes, as well as the failures. News about technological development seem to be generally positive. However, critical journalism and research are teaching us about machine learning as a biased and even discriminating entity.

Cette exposition collective, curatée par Thierry Vandenbussche et Privacy Salon, est présentée à l'occasion de la Computer Privacy and Data Protection Conference (CPDP 2020).

Artistes : Adina Camhy (AT), Heather Dewey-Hagborg (US), Dasha Ilina (RU), Mélodie Mousset (FR/CH), Lucie Planty (FR), Jenna Sutela (FI), Joanna Zylinska (UK).

When

Fri. 14 Feb, 2020
Mensch Machine_Visuel affiche

This exhibition opens with a historical point of view through the artwork called Chronique de L’humanité by the French artist Lucie Planty, whose practice evolves around books and the art of editing. The work displays images and drawings depicting humanity in a chronological order, on a nearly endless scroll. It is a digital reproduction of a book edited by Hachette editions in 1986, from which all textual content has been erased. The last image in the chronicle is Armstrong’s landing on the moon. Hence, in this work, humanity seems to grow into something new from there on…

ERMA (pillow), 2015 © Chris Dreier
© Chris Dreier, "ERMA" (pillow), 2015

Chris Dreier is an icon from the Berliner 1980’s punk scene, whose artwork has oftentimes been forged from an activist’s point of view. She created a series of tapestries related to privacy, data and war technology. ERMA is a cushion made of the first machine readable font.

nimiia vibié is a peculiar work by Finnish artist Jenna Sutela for which she exploits a machine to create a Martian language through AI. The source for the language comes from a bacterium which is considered to be Martian.

Nonhuman Vision (film still), HD-video, 07_06 min., 2018 © Joanna Zylinska
© Joanna Zylinska, "Nonhuman Vision" (film still), HD-video, 07-06 min., 2018

Joanna Zylinska is a writer, lecturer, artist and curator, working in the areas of new technologies and new media, ethics, photography and art. She is a Professor of New Media and Communications, and Co-Head of the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London.  In her video ‘Non-human vision’, she offers a compelling insight on the idea of AI dreaming up the human outside the human. The work reflects on the idea of when the camera shapes and regulates life, even far beyond ways that humans commonly use to exploit cameras. Non-human photography is neither of, by or for the human.

In How do you see me?, the artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg utilized adversarial processes, algorithms that are designed to deceive machine learning systems. In the research, she creates a self-portrait that doesn’t resemble the artist at all, although the image will be recognized as such.

03_Mensch Maschine Or Putting Parts Together (film still), 2019 © Adina Camhy_300dpi
© Adina Camhy, "Mensch Maschine Or Putting Parts Together" (film still), 2019

The artist and electronic musician Adina Camhy analyzes in her video MENSCH MASCHINE OR PUTTING PARTS TOGETHER different possible relationships between humans and machines, specially based on gender issues. The work originated when instead of the specific synthesizer the first person narrator asked for, she got an unwanted kitchen robot for her birthday.

The Center for Technological Pain by Dasha Ilina mocks and questions our increasing connection, as a body, to the Internet of Things. The center produces a selection of DIY and Open Source objects to relieve pain caused by digital technologies such as smartphones and laptops. Among the developed prototypes are mechanical eye shields that reduce eyestrain, a headset to free the user’s hands, an insomnia-free box and various more or less absurd gadgets to relieve tense elbows and fingers. CTP also offers DIY manuals on how to build low-tech accessories from cheap materials.

HanaHana 花華 (VR experience), © Mélodie Mousset
© Mélodie Mousset, "HanaHana 花華" (VR experience)

The Center for Technological Pain by Dasha Ilina mocks and questions our increasing connection, as a body, to the Internet of Things. The center produces a selection of DIY and Open Source objects to relieve pain caused by digital technologies such as smartphones and laptops. Among the developed prototypes are mechanical eye shields that reduce eyestrain, a headset to free the user’s hands, an insomnia-free box and various more or less absurd gadgets to relieve tense elbows and fingers. CTP also offers DIY manuals on how to build low-tech accessories from cheap materials.

Logos
Logos
Friday
14
February 2020

Extra information

Wednesday 05 February the Gallery will exceptionally be closed at 5pm.