A group exhibition at the media art centre Jeu de Paume in Paris features 30 artists working with artificial intelligence—among themHolly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, Grégory Chatonsky, Agnieszka Kurant, Christian Marclay, Trevor Paglen, Hito Steyerl, and Sasha Stiles.
Titled "Le Monde Selon L’IA” (The World Through AI), the show, which runs from April 11 to September 21, approaches artificial intelligence through a critical lens, taking into consideration its social and ecological dimensions.
As the Jeu de Paume writes: “Since the late 2000s, algorithms and models have infiltrated every stratum of culture and society, economics and politics, science and military operations.
Everywhere, their use raises multiple ethical, epistemological, political, and geopolitical questions, all the more so as they require colossal material and environmental resources.”
In this context, images play a crucial role: the impact of AI on contemporary artistic practices and on visual culture in general is one of the most visible phenomena in an environment dominated by discrete operations, invisible processes, and black boxes.
AI technologies are profoundly transforming the way images are taken, created, modified, disseminated, described and viewed. Since the 2010s, many artists have been questioning the growing influence of AI in our societies, and exploring these upheavals through a variety of media.
To organize the group show, the curators differentiate between two themes, analytical AI, for example as used in predictive policing or facial recognition software, and generative models, used for creating new texts and visuals from existing databases.
In a series of “time capsules” - showcases distributed throughout the exhibition spaces - historical precursors of automation, computational processes and communication (with technical devices, photographs and diagrams) are juxtaposed with contemporary AI models and images.
