A FOREST

This project is the result of the collaboration with Arnaud Bayle, Isabelle Hupont, Blai Tomas, Alice Blake, Tom Mitchell, a Stanford classmate and two AI Chief Technology Officers.

A FOREST includes the following works:

  • Video – 7 Minutes
  • Video – A Forest
  • Photographs – A Forest series
  • Drawings – A Forest series
  • Photographs – Rhetoric of Silence series
  • Essay by W.J.T. Mitchell
  • Talks, seminars & open discussion forums.

VIDEO – 7 MINUTES (7 minutes in loop)

Dedicated to W.J.T. Mitchell

“Italian museum uses cameras to track how visitors engage with Art – A new A.I. system hopes to help curators determine artworks’ “attraction value” and optimize gallery layouts”.
Published by Smithsonian Magazine, August 2021

VIDEO – A FOREST (23 minutes in loop)

A scripted monologue by the managing director of the leading Venture Capital firm investing in Artificial Intelligence start-ups questions the nature of reality: Are the images real? Is the voice real? But the key questions truly being addressed are: What is the ideology behind the leading investors in this technology? What are the social values at stake? What are its political implications?

PHOTOGRAPHS (21 photos)

“Asked” to represent itself, an advanced Artificial Intelligence Deep Neural Network produced images that, unexpectedly, were not anthropomorphic but rhizomatic. The images may be considered the first AI selfies.

Deep Neural Networks are designed following the algorithm first proposed in the essay presented in full under the images, an algorithm that might be equated to an empty ego.

DRAWINGS (12 drawings 30×42 cm)

Computer workstations in AI laboratories are the sites of value creation in contemporary society. Stylized versions from office-furniture catalogues, these cubicles represent the post-industrial factory production sites. Immateriality, isolation and abstraction are their common characteristics, in contradiction with the drawings’ physicality.

PHOTOGRAPHS (20 photos)

Fragments of epistolary texts translated into binary code. Meaningless to the human, contain all the necessary machine-language information. Analog sensuality written in the fractured language of the digital.