2019/20
Mika Satomi
The introduction of AI into the workplace is often discussed with slight anxiety. Is it going to abolish our jobs? Is it going to replace me in my work? We continue to feel uneasy in accepting giving our labor over to AI, even with the promises of shorter working hours, the elimination of hard labor, optimized “sustainable” production and other “economic benefits”.
Artificial Intelligence and its False Lies is an attempt of the artist to opt for proximity to this unfamiliar technology rather than observing fearfully from a distance. A garment covered with
a high-low tech embroidered Artificial Neural Network, a kind of AI, is an intelligent “ghost” without a body of its own. By wearing the garment, the artist slowly teaches the network how she moves. Eventually this primitive intelligence machine-learns the wearer and dreams about her in her absence.
What does it dream of?
The details of the project, development process, sketches and thoughts are documented at the project page. https://www.kobakant.at/false-lies/
The project was developed in collaboration with the SFI CONFIRM Centre for Smart manufacturing and SFI INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics research group at the University College Cork, Ireland under the Vertigo.STARTS Residencies program. Within our collaboration, I had a very nice exchange and dialogs with the researchers at the UCC, who are developing these AI systems. I made a series of interviews with them asking “what is AI?” “What they see as a future society with AI?” and “If they see possible problem with AI?” Here is the link to the full interview film.
Prototypes
The project was featured in the online exhibition of AI lab at the Ars Electronica 2020 as a guided tour video. https://ars.electronica.art/keplersgardens/de/artificial-intelligence/
This project is funded by the Vertigo.STARTS Residencies of the European Commission, based on technological elements from the SFI Confirm Centre for Smart manufacturing and SFI Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Ireland.