By Percy Chen, Junior Project Manager Art-Science
Supported by Pro Helvetia and swissnex China, the educational program of the Open Codes exhibition at Chronus Art Center had its first speaker – Boris Magrini on August 25.
Dr. Boris Magrini earned his PhD in art history at the University of Zurich. He is now a curator at HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel), organizing exhibitions, performances, and talk-series that foster transdisciplinary dialogues between arts and sciences. Dr. Magrini has an impressive track record in curating: his past projects include Future Love. Desire and Kinship in Hypernature (HeK, Basel, 2018), Hydra Project (Sonnenstube, Lugano, 2016), Grounded Visions: Artistic Research into Environmental Issues (ETH, Zurich, 2015–2016), Mutamenti (Bellinzona, 2007). In addition, Dr. Magrini has published a number of books: Confronting the Machine: An Enquiry into the Subversive Drives of Computer and Alternative Visions: Human Futures.
During the Entangled Reality lecture at Chronus Art Center, Dr. Magrini talked in-depth about the dialectical narrative surrounding computer art and its intricate connections to both art and science. Among art historians, the common belief is that the relevance of computer art, as well as art that involves artificial intelligence, are there to bridge the gap between the arts and the sciences. Computer art are hence genuine opportunity for us to find a common ground between the two fields. Proponents of this common view range from Jasia Reichardt (Curator of Cybernetic Serendipity, Institute of Contemporary Arts), to Stephen Wilson, and Edward A. Shanken.
Jasia Reichardt
“The aim is to present an area of activity which manifests artists involvement with science, and the scientists involvement with the arts; also, to show the links between the random systems employed by the artists, composers and poets, and those involved with the making and the use of cybernetic devices.”
“The computer is only a tool (…)”
According to Dr. Magrini, this common view rests on several assumptions:
The common view assumes that art making belongs to the emotional and creative sphere while sciences are grounded in analytical thinking and empirical observations.
Computer art necessitates a certain approach/aesthetic closer to analytical approaches in the sciences.
A computer is nothing but a tool for artists.
Computer art (and even media art) is separated from the traditional field of art.
Some of them are simply not the case in real life. For example, the idea of medium specificity, per se, is inappropriate. Computers and other medias offer so much ranges of possibility to create work of art that they cannot simply be considered tools in the sense of replacing pencils and brushes. Frequently nowadays, computers play primary roles in creation, taking on roles of autonomous painters.
The narrative of “bridging the gap between the humanities and sciences” is also problematic. For it reinforces the unnecessary stereotype that art is emotional, irrational, and science is objective and practical. If an artist produces a piece of work that belongs to the latter, is he or she making art or practicing science? The common narrative would necessitate that the artist is attempting to practice science, not create art. Therefore, the common narrative forces a didactic role to artist production, failing to recognize its diversity and possibilities.
As a matter of fact, artists working with computers have frequently refused to associate their work with the scientific research. Their attitudes towards information technologies and artificial intelligence are usually circumspection.
Examples of researchers and philosophers who have contributed to a skeptical view about artificial intelligence :
Hubert L Dreyfus, Stuart E. Dreyfus and Tom Athanasiou
"Current AI is based on the idea, prominent in philosophy since Descartes, that all understanding consists in forming and using appropriate representations. Given the nature of inference engines, AI's representations must be formal ones, and so common sense understanding must be understood as some vast body of precise propositions, beliefs, rules, facts, and procedures. Thus formulated, the problem has so far resisted solutions. We predict it will continue to do so." (Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer (New York: Free Press, 1986), 99)
Joseph Weizenbaum
"The achievements of the artificial intelligentsia are mainly triumphs of technique. They have contributed little either to cognitive psychology or to practical problem solving."
"Modern technological rationalizations of war, diplomacy, politics, and commerce (such as computer games) have an even more insidious effect on the making of policy. Not only have policy makers abdicated their decision-making responsibility to a technology they do not understand - though all the while maintaining the illusion that they, the policy makers, are formulating policy questions and answering them - but responsibility has altogether evaporated." (Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1976), 229.)
Dr. Magrini continued to summarize some of the main arguments brought forward by researchers and philosophers:
AI goals are unachievable in the sense that they don’t constitute real contribute to knowledge. (Joseph Weizenbaum, Hubert Dreyfus)
Top down approach is ineffective (Rodney Brooks, Christopher Langton.)
AI and computers serve the interest of capitalist society: automation, unemployment, alienation. (Gilles Deleuze, Herbert Marcuse, Lewis Mumford and Richard Barbrook, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri)
Scientific research and modern technologies are a threat to the fundamental moral values of society. (Conservative philosophers Daniel Bell, Francis Fukuyama, and Neil Postman)
The connection between computer and art are indeed intricate. Ever since homo sapiens have discovered ways to paint on cave walls, we have constantly challenged and pushed the boundaries of art and its implications. It is therefore inadequate to set art in a predefined model, as the common view does. While science is defined by the scientific methodology, art has the freedom of narrative and a diverse range of expressions. Computer art, AI art, and other art forms that involve pioneering technologies are significant not so much due to their scientific accuracy or educational opportunities as because of their visionary and aesthetic property, both of which are necessary complement in discussing our future synchronicity with a growing production and dissemination of algorithms.
And finally, Dr. Magrini concluded his arguments by preposing several questions regarding artificial intelligence:
A more overarching consideration of the role of AI in our society and its framework is urgent and necessary. Should AI support the logic of economic growth or should it strive to achieve better social conditions and life quality for the majority of the population? Can it be applied to solve the ecological difficulties we are facing? Could it bring a paradigm change to our very own existence, as proposed by visionary post-human theorists, and is this a path that we should embrace? It is essential that we don’t let these choices being taken by a handful of companies that have the technical resources and the economic interests to develop the future applications of AI.
Artists have often used artificial intelligence to create an alternative discourse to the conventional one promoted by IT companies, on the one hand, and the entertainment industry on the other. They allow us to reflect on the question of creativity and what makes us human, on the possible pitfalls involved in the implementation of AI in our everyday life, and they raise concerns about the environment and new social conditions.
We would like to thank Chronus Art Center and Dr. Boris Magrini for the exceptionally sophisticated presentation on art and technology. Martin Heidegger once said “what characterizes an artwork is that in it a world and an earth are revealed whereas ordinary things do not, for the most part, yield such disclosure”(1990, Singh, R. Raj). Artwork is unique and significant precisely because it opens up reality to unparalleled possibilities. Technology on the other hand reveals the world as raw material, capable for production and manipulation. Art and technology, Artificial Intelligence and singularity, paradigms shifts and world crisis, in this faster than ever world, we ought to stay informed and stay skeptical in order to dwell in this “advanced” reality.