On September 30, 2020, AI: Love and Artificial Intelligence, a multimedia exhibition curated by Chen Jiaying, the winner of the Hyundai Blue Prize 2019 “Sustainability”, will have its grand opening at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing (E-1, 798 Art Zone, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing).
On the opening day of the exhibition, leaders of Hyundai Motor Company and artists will attend together as guests. Curator Chen Jiaying will make a live demonstration of the exhibition concept, space planning and other contents to discuss the relationship between artificial intelligence and love.
AI: Love and Artificial Intelligence is composed of 13 domestic and overseas artists’ works. Under the theme of “Social Intelligence”, by exploring Eros and Philia, the exhibition discusses emotional decisions under the influence of algorithms, love affairs in the online environment, and the physical intimacies in long-distance relationships and resonates the sympathies woven by big data in various forms of video installation, 3D animation, mirror tile, multimedia interactive installation, video game.
AI is a pun. It is the pronunciation of “love” in Chinese pinyin, and at the same time, stands for “Artificial Intelligence” in English. The two alphabets present the love that this generation has acquired in the age of social networking. It is a metaphor for our manipulated emotions and speaks about romantic online relationships through an intertextual narrative.
The exhibition starts with a game which is called Monster Match, created by American artists Benjamin Berman and Miguel Perez. Inspired by the typical “swipe right to like, swipe left to dislike” mechanism, it divides the exhibition hall into blue and pink spaces and allows visitors to choose the left or the right route.
Monster Match, a simulation of online dating with monsters, is a stark illustration of the discrimination in dating apps caused by AI algorithm. AI uses “Collaborative Filtering” to count everyone’s swipes to decide what to show. The more popular the content is, the more likely it is to be recommended in the list, so the data is often generated at the expense of the minority.
Significant Other is a work that will appear in both routes. It is an intelligent networked device, consisting of two cameras and their corresponding display screens. Hanging suspended from the roof, two cameras and flatscreens are positioned back-to-back in a V-shape. The cameras are programmed to read and capture “the emotional state” of each passer-by, while the information is showed on each corresponding screen in the opposite space. The pair of dual-screen-and-camera installations capture, display and share imagery and information, realizing the interaction and communication between the two spaces.
Postcards Project: Crying Out Love, in the Center of the Data is not only the end of the exhibition space, but also the start of the public domain. It is a postcard project initiated by He Rongkai and the curator for this exhibition. In this network era, the behavior of “liking” gradually becomes people’s emotional characteristic. This project invites the public to pick up a pen, feel the scratch between the nib and the paper, turn their messages into specific postcards and send them to the one who they would like to greet with warmness via the real mail system.
Although the exhibition is divided into two completely different parts by the game, it is also connected with each other through the artworks. Visitors will walk through artworks such as The Groundless Protag, The Intimacy Package, Love Poem, Blue Hole, or artworks such as Ashley Madison Angels at Work in Beijing, Amber Bog, I hate people, but I love you, Column. Under the metaphor of swapping left and right, visitors will follow their selected exhibition route and experience the space which is manipulated by the algorithm. Visitors can review the network behavior in the era of big data, explore the algorithm operation behind each selection, understand artists’ tales through the spectrum of their works and rethink the emotional and technological circumstances of our time.
“We live in the era of big data under artificial intelligence. How should we face the increasingly humanized artificial intelligence technology? Will AI really have love?” You may find the answer in the exhibition AI: Love and Artificial Intelligence which will be on till January 3rd, 2021 at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.
Artists：
Aaajiao (CN)
!Mediengruppe Bitnik (CHE)
Benjamin Berman & Miguel Perez (US)
Chen Zhou (CN)
He Rongkai (CN)
Jonas Lund (SWE)
Liu Shiyuan (CN)
Stine Deja (DK)
Wang NewOne (CN)
Frank WANG Yefeng (CN)
Adam Harvey (US)
Johanna Bruckner (AUT)