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ENTANGLED REALITIES 57 by Anna Ridler Exhibitions about artificial intelligence are making their ROW THE FRONT presence felt in museums across the world. We know the term but are still unsure what it really means for us. We already experience it daily but its full potential in both our working and private lives scares the hell out of many people. Understanding AI through art, Entangled Realities seeks to find a more nuanced narrative. a Neves ion s c : Deep Belief, 2018 s Herndon/Dryhur VideoPhoto Proto Studio / Daniel Co Anna Ridler with David Pfau,, Bloemenveiling, 2019 Detail of work sold at au 56 57 ENTANGLED REALITIES Anna Ridler Making sense of it all ROW THE FRONT 001), series of photographs both from 2017, beings and are the products of people, and be- that show the process of a self-driving car cause of this, inevitably come to enshrine cer- learning to see, and how it pictures the world tain cultural or social attitudes. Trevor Paglen’s in a series of blots and blobs. There is a ten- Behold these Glorious Times! (2017) shows the sion though. In Bridle’s opening night lecture humanity that goes into producing datasets – he told the audience that while we are learning how they need to include every single type of more and more about intelligent non-human action and object in order to understand the systems that exist in the natural world (trees world. Watching these small fragments of hu- that can communicate to each other through man lives, as a film, is moving and profound, entire forests for example), we are spending a vast range of narratives, peoples, and scenes more and more time, effort and resources in played out within minutes. As a method, ex- trying to reproduce our own version of intel- ploring training sets through art is a way of re- ligence in a digital flecting back on our- form, ignoring the selves and the world weirdness and oth- But machine learning can that we have created. erness that already also show humanness. exists. Some of this Training sets, the information Many of the works is captured in Jenna in the exhibition are Sutela’s nimiia cétiï given to machine learning in-between this spec- (2018), a video piece algorithms that it then uses trum of otherness and that is inspired by to produce an output, humanity, what hap- experiments in inter- are reflections of their pens when the human ian Schmieg, Decisive Mirror, 2019 s species communica- and machine inter- allation view, photo: Franz Wamhof context. s Seba In tion and attempts to twine – the entangled connect with a world realities that give the Entangled Realities, a group show currently on AI is commonly thought of as the ability of a beyond our consciousness. It uses the interac- exhibition its name. It is something that is ex- at HeK Basel, looks at the impact of artificial machine to perform tasks that require ‘intel- tions between a neural network, audio record- plored in my piece Bloemenveiling (2019), made intelligence (AI). Increasingly our world is being ligent human behaviour’: translating words, ings of a French psychic's version of a Mar- with David Pfau. It examines this interaction created by software we hardly understand – fi- driving cars, recognising faces. And while tian language and the movements of bacteria, across a distributed app to auction AI generated nancial markets where bots endlessly trade with systems can do these things, it is misleading to create a new form of communication that tulips on the blockchain (a public ledger where other bots, social media algorithms that control to think that they understand the world in could be a glimpse of how something other cryptocurrency transactions are recorded and what narrative we see, even AI fakes that make the same way we do. When shown a picture than human might experience the world. confirmed anonymously, and whose informa- us doubt our own ears and eyes – so that it be- of a cat, they do not see a cat, but rather pat- tion once entered cannot be altered). Echoing comes harder and harder to sort out where the terns and data. Machine learning in this way But machine learning can also show human- the auctions that sprung up throughout taverns human influence is. Works in the show question can show us the potential ‘field of vision’ of ness. Training sets, the information given to in 17th-century Holland at the height of tulip this entanglement, and by exploring it seek to something non-human. Such possibilities are machine learning algorithms that it then uses mania, the piece interrogates the way technol- disentangle notions around what it might be to explored by James Bridle in Untitled (Activa- to produce an output, are reflections of their ogy drives human desire and economic dynam- be both machine and human. tion 001-005) and Untitled (Autonomous Trap context. They are always compiled by human ics by creating artificial scarcity. Short moving 58 59 ENTANGLED REALITIES Anna Ridler THE FRONT ROW THE FRONT allation view, photo: Franz Wamhof s Zach Blas & Jemima Wyman, im here to learn so :)))))), 2017 In images that almost look like real tulips but are The human-machine interaction is also part of created by AI are sold at auction using smart Mario Klingemann’s Uncanny Mirror (2018), contracts on the Ethereum network, a global, where visitors stand in front of a screen to have open-source platform for decentralised appli- their image transformed and transmuted by AI cations. Each time a tulip is sold, thousands of into something that is recognisably them but computers around the world all work to veri- also not them. Uncanny is often a word that is fy the transaction, checking each other's work used to describe images or texts that have been against each other. Even if the website for the produced by machine learning: what has been auction shuts down, a permanent record will made has a disquieting strangeness or mysteri- still exist of who owns which tulip. A network ousness that makes it not quite true. This sense of bots participates in the auction alongside of the word of something being uncomfort- humans, driving demand in much the same way ably strange or unfamiliar overtakes the older as automated trading algorithms drive modern meaning, which had more connotations of be- allation view financial markets. After a week, the tulip is ing mischievous, malicious or not to be trusted. s blighted, and its owner can no longer view the This shift, from being scared to uncertainty, is moving image piece. In this way, the decay and perhaps the way that a visitor will view AI after impermanence of the natural world is reintro- experiencing the works on view, moving away duced into the digital world. While AI that cre- from the hysteria that machines will take over ated the moving image pieces has the potential the world to a more nuanced understanding of to generate infinite flowers, the enormous dis- AI’s ambivalent strangeness. tributed network behind Ethereum is used, at • great environmental cost, to introduce scarcity Entangled Realities – Living with Artificial Intelligence, HeK (House of Elecronic Arts) Basel, until 11 Augus, to an otherwise limitless resource. hek.ch Mario Klingemann, Uncanny Mirror, 2018, in Photo: Franz Wamhof 60 61.

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