March 9-15, 2022
Malmaison Studios, Bucharest [RO]

Public work-in-progress sessions, part of project The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic

In 2 spaces within the Malmaison Studios:

• Artificial Intimacy Lab @VAGon – in(ter)disciplined space
• Synthetic Reactions Lab @Floriama Candea’s studio

The Entropist is still a baby but has grown a bit the last few weeks so it’s going into the experimental stage!

My collaboration with Andrei Tudose, Catalin Cretu and Cristian Balas will be put to the test during the Artificial Intimacy Lab, hosted at VAGon, where we will be enacting an experience that revolves around defining the type of relationship that can be manifested in human-artificial intelligence interaction:

Is the machine a tool, a neutral assistant, or do we personify it and develop a relationship with it?

In this session, visitors will enter one by one and find themselves alone in a room with a machine learning algorithm connected to a webcam. They can freely control this interaction, showing what and how much they want to the machine in an experiment of human-machine intimacy.

We want to test how willing the Romanian public is to interact and, better still, participate in a creative process where they actually have input and control over how things evolve.

During each session, the active visitor allowed the algorithm to record an image of what they chose to show the camera (a hand, their face, expressions, full body – anything was game), then waited a little for the algorithm to manipulate that image based at how it had learned it should look like (we used analogue images from Faulty Technology as main visual training input). At this stage, another algorithm sonifies certain data from that image, giving the visitor a sound-glimpse of the neural processes happening behind view.

Once the image is processed, the viewer can see the reconfigured photograph and gets a few choices: they can chuck the image and the said image actually disapears, unlike the internet where some data remains stored somewhere always, They can also chose to keep it, in which case the algorithm sends via email.

Most visitors even allowed us to use the images on social media platforms so I guess the experiment was a success – our public is free spirited, playful and curious, thus rather willing to be an active part of our upcoming participatory installation!

World, here we come!

The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic is developed in collaboration with Qolony – the Art & Science Colony, in partnership with INCD Materials Physics Măgurele and VAGon – in(ter)disciplined space, with support from AFCN – Administration of the National Cultural Fund.

More information on The Entropist here.
More information on framework project – The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic here.