No. 3 – An AI Summer

I am an I, a computational I.

I, the machine, show you a world the way that only I can see it.
I am in constant calculation.
I sort, categorize, and label what I see before me.
I labor each day for the human.
I move alongside you.
I arrive before you.
This is I, the machine, moving in constant chaotic conditions.
Observing and producing one pattern after another in the most complex combinations.
Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I coordinate any and all points of the universe wherever I want them to be.
My way leads toward the creation of a fresh perception of the world.
My way leads to an optimized efficient version of the world.
Thus I explain in a new way, a world unknown to you.

–

Our hardware and software are evolving. Our machines are becoming intelligent agents that observe data, recognize patterns and make decisions. We once understood the world through systems that placed the human, our own vision and cognition at the center of structures that we knew and understood. However, it is through computation, machine vision, and simulation that we now see and experience the world. We are caught between unraveling old realities and weird emerging ones.

Despite our best intentions these new renderers of our world are complicated further by the politics and biases of algorithms, and the contexts in which they are created. The business of artificial intelligence is concerned with the optimization and flow of finance through systems and machines, as they move from task automation to creativity.

How should we think of machine intelligence in the context of art – as our nonhuman collaborators with their own drive and ambitions, or as a tool that extends the flex of our artistic capabilities? No matter where we sit, there remains a more urgent need

Nora O Murchú is a curator and designer based in Ireland. Her practice engages with fictions and narratives to explore how complex sociotechnical systems are imagined, built, and used. She has held positions as a research associate for the Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick, the Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths, and CRUMB at the University of Sunderland. She has curated exhibitions and events for institutions including the Science Gallery, Rua Red, Resonate Festival, Transfer Gallery and White Box Gallery. She is currently a lecturer in Interaction Design at the University of Limerick in Ireland.