FOLD ME, BEND ME, BREAK ME, SAID THE COMPUTER
In a folded world of multiple intelligences and pervasive but invisible structures, how much agency do we really have, and what can we do about it?
Kristensen and Walker report artistic R&D with The New Real that explores how an audience can become enfolded through immersion and interaction, and conversely how the 'black box' of AI can be unfolded by going inside it.
When we fold something, the fold divides, separates and multiplies what is folded at the same time as it connects sides, reveals and hides. Folding is thus a contradictory act, simultaneously deleting and opening up. This concept has been applied to AI and intelligence more broadly. This talk will use the fold as a starting point to zoom out, providing a way of understanding language, labour, productivity and agency. Then it will zoom back in to focus specifically on artistic practice, and performance in particular, as a means of unfolding complex concepts and structures such as AI.
Kristensen and Walker believe AI can be inspirational and not only instrumental, through approaches such as Surrealism. Their creative practice reimagines interactions between humans and machines, and questions the role of language, classification and measurement that underlie our contemporary reality. They illustrate the transformative difference between viewing the 'black box' of AI from outside, and journeying inside it.
Artist Talk, by Linnea Langfjord Kristensen and Kevin Walker
About the artists
Linnea Langfjord Kristensen is an artist and writer working between performance, film and installation. Her work investigates how meaning and ideas of reality are created and distributed through language with special attention to how ideas of ‘a meaningful life’ are constructed through popularised narratives and technology, embodied in everyday actions and desires. Her current work examines societal and institutional norms that encourage a culture of endless progress, where people must meet an infinite number of success criteria set up on an endless scale. Her work's been shown internationally including Stedelijk Museum NL, Cockpit Theatre UK, Martin Asbæk Gallery DK.
Kevin Walker an artist and a researcher at Coventry University, where he leads a research theme on AI and Algorithmic Cultures working across anthropology, technology and the arts. He led the project Performing AI, funded by The Alan Turing Institute and co-created an immersive installation for the exhibition ‘AI’, on view at NDSM Amsterdam. He's dedicated to supporting emerging and previously marginalised artists, develops hardware and software, and his art practice involves sound, moving image and drawing. He's made commissioned work for Centre Pompidou, Kensington Palace, Transport for London, the British Council; curated exhibitions and events, and written about art, AI and related topics.