January 22 – March 30, 2025
About:
This exhibition places artificial intelligence into an historical context as artists mark milestones in the development of technology and its impact on society. These artists alternately embrace AI for its potential to reflect the human condition and critique it for its seductively banal entertainment value and potential for social isolation.
Related Events:
Funeral for Organic Intelligence
Saturday, March 01, at 7 p.m.
Top floor, Elaine Langone Center on the campus of Bucknell University
701 Moore Avenue, Lewisburg, PA 17837
Join the Samek Art Museum as we mark the historic ascension of Artificial Intelligence with a tongue-in-cheek funeral for Organic Intelligence. Following the brief service a reception will be held for the opening of the exhibition FOR YOU: The Comfortable Alienation of AI. Funeral attire encouraged.
Curatorial Text:
Since the Industrial Revolution, we have become increasingly self-aware of how technology reorders society. Each new wave of technology – from telegraph to television to internet – registers its own changes and collectively they define the modern era. Cultural responses analyze, celebrate, or critique these changing conditions. In the 19th century, Karl Marx theorized that the transition from agrarian to factory work alienated the worker from the fruits of their labor. Much of the Modernist art of the 20th century responded to the technological savagery of two world wars and the ensuing psychological alienation of technocratic post-war society with its arms race, space race, and plastic-gadget-filled consumer culture.
Artificial intelligence is the latest technology poised to transform society along the lines of the industrial and digital revolutions. Much of its impact will be felt in ways currently unknown. Will AI impact 300 million jobs by 2030 as Goldman Sachs predicts? What will replace the historical proof of photos and videos as markers of journalistic truth? What impact will the new industry of life-like interactive AI companions have on the mental health crisis of social isolation? Artists take up these questions; examining the role of the creator, the function of the image, and the nature of the self.
One aspect of generative AI, distinct from 20th century mass media, is its ability to create content that is customized to the individual person. Could previously separate media collide so that AI renders our movies in real-time, allowing the protagonist to be interactive, perhaps to stick around as our life companion – creating a comfortable media cocoon separate and unique to each of us? Fewer shared cultural references would deepen our isolating media bubbles; at the same time AI’s easy access could offer people the tools to become less consumers and more co-creators of their media environments.
Artists in this show reveal numerous responses to technology-driven social changes; they invite you to consider and to question what is being offered for you.
Installation Images:
Top image credit: Jhave, Identity Upgrade, n.d. “This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence scheme, project number 332643, The Center for Digital Narrative.”