Machines become intelligent by being fed with information about the world. Who feeds them and selects this information? What biases and perspectives are transferred to machines? Religion is one such nuanced concept—the understanding of it differs throughout the world. The term Messiah refers to different figures or ideas depending on one’s religious belief.

Pioneering AI research is predominantly situated in the United States, where 70 percent of the population identify as Christian. To highlight resulting potential Western bias, religion is simplified to mean Christianity, so the term Messiah is represented by Jesus Christ. Using artistic impressions of Jesus Christ to train a deep convolutional generative adversarial network (DCGAN) and subsequently to generate images, the artist obtained an artificial-intelligence interpretation of the term Messiah. These generated images comprise the stained-glass window.

Credits

Technical support: Andreas Schmelas

Project created within the framework of the New Media Class at Berlin University of the Arts

The apprentices of Wacker Neuson asked this question and found a result, which can be watched here:

A ball gets to a high starting point by a programmed hydraulic shovel. When the ball is rolling down the path, different elements are triggered in this construction.

When the ball gets to the end of the path, the hydraulic shovel puts it to the starting point automatically – and the game starts again!

Every visitor is invited to hear the different sounds, to accept the cost of production and to become part of the art industry. When an investment is made in all the machines at the same time they will perform one superior composition.

All the machines are part of the collection of the artist-led nothing more foundation (nm), which decided to distribute these automatons to various cultural organizations, in order to collect micropayments that will be used to support other artistic activities that create more coin-operated artworks.

Credits

nothing more foundation (Hilkmann, Knierzinger, Muik, et al.)

The Spiral Falls sorting machine will take on a new role in this year: Joseph Herscher, the artist and Youtube personality from New York, will persuade the former package-slide machine to do a very human task: Since it is not being used for a huge logistic system anymore, and has been left all by itself, this big machine somehow got bored. So the spiral falls starts to play, only using objects that it “knows” from its past. Boxes, envelopes, poster tubes, gifts, toys, dolls or anything else that might once have been sent through it in a package. The actions it undertakes seem very curious—although they run to a fixed schedule and have defined roles in the whole playing system. This might leave visitors asking: where is the neuronal control for that? Is the machine playing by itself? Maybe the spiral falls just represent something that is not visible at all: the formation of creativity and complex ideas that might consist of inspiration we get from different influences—also from machines that seem to do only what we tell them to.

Credit: Martin Hieslmair

Commissioned by Ars Electronica
www.josephsmachines.com

Machine perception is the ability of a computer system to interpret data in a manner that is similar to the way humans use their senses to relate to the world around them. Inspired by the brain, deep neural networks (DNN) are thought to learn abstract representations through their hierarchical architecture. Using an artistic approach to interpret the learning mechanism of an A.I.-based projection-mapping technique, we challenge the dominant perception system of an artificial intelligence as practiced today, which is purely objective and reductionist.

Credits

Direction and animation: VOID (www.bevoid.co)
Directors: Yusuf Emre Kucur, Bahadır Dağdelen
Producers: Evren Erbasol, Baris Serdar
Concept development: Selay Karasu
Project manager: Selay Karasu
A/V Artists: Yusuf Emre Kucur, Bahadır Dağdelen, Gokhan Dogan, Kerem Akgun

These are the questions addressed by Empathic Gateway, an exhibition organized by Engineers without Borders, Reporters without Borders and Doctors without Borders.

Credits

Sponsored by HUBER Reklametechnik GmbH