New ways of life
The latest developments in digital and computer technologies, wireless networks and the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are disrupting everything. They are also shaping our culture. Artists too, who may also be programmers, are increasingly making use of data, computer code, machine learning and algorithms, including to create generative artworks. Space research covering multiple technological areas provides a lasting source of inspiration as well. However, at the dawn of a new era in human-machine synergies, aesthetics and art production, many questions remain. How will AI shape our lives in the future? Where will digital and Space technologies take us next?
In this section, the British artist duo Superflux provokes critical reflection with a video that tests the limits of daily life as guided by slickly designed chatbot devices. Meanwhile, Dutch-Brazilian pioneer of Internet art Rafaël Rozendaal uses computer code to magically transform webpage fields into the pattern for a superbly colourful tapestry. Turning to the 24/7 news cycle and another way of technologically reframing unrelenting information flows, the installation by Daniel Canogar uses customised software to transform serially uploaded CNN web videos into an on-screen cascade or endless “ripple” that never repeats itself. In real time, the LA- and Madrid-based new media artist literally captures today’s climate of non-stop media consumption and data overload in flux.
Berlin-based Dutch conceptual artist Harm van den Dorpel investigates how algorithms can guide aesthetic decision-making. Whereas traditional artistic media tend to require that the artist creates work directly with their own hands, van den Dorpel works with digital archives and develops his own software. By looping continuous feedback through this software, he trains it to produce works with unpredictable aesthetic outcomes. The artist has created a digital environment where he can let programs mutate freely and use the outputs of an algorithm as input for his complex compositions that bring to the fore desired traits, the product of a painterly, subjective and labour-intensive process.
Finally, in a departure from worldly matters, the artwork Rotating Space by Andreas Zybach alludes to the quest in Space research to develop a space station that, by rotating on its own axis, creates gravitational conditions similar to those on Earth. The aim is to overcome the adverse effects of weightlessness in Space on human health; and even enable the use of soil, water and seeds to recreate in Space something like the environment to which we have grown accustomed on Earth. The work was first exhibited as part of a series at Munich’s Old Botanical Garden.
Thus we return to the "environmental": a word rooted in the Old French viron, which means a circle, and derived from vir(er), which means to turn and provides the root of the modern English word "veer", meaning to change direction. Knowing that the direction of innovation is constantly changing, what do you imagine the future of technology might hold, as connections between art and innovation deepen?