The Jeu de Paume Museum, centre of photography, image, and digital creation, opens its doors until September 21st to The World Through AI (Le Monde Selon L’IA), a journey through the artwork of more than thirty creators who, over the past decade, have used artificial intelligence as a field of study and creation. Their works explore and break down where AI comes from, where it is heading, and how we can walk alongside it.
With only a few precedents when it comes to exhibiting the rise of AI in our times, The World Through AI unveiled last April 11th one of the first major exhibitions on artificial intelligence presented strictly through works of art. Its aim is not only to showcase what AI is capable of but also to explore how we can control it, moving away from being its passive consumers.
Commissioned by Antonio Somaini, art historian and author of Cultura visuale. Immagini, sguardi, media, dispositivi (2016), as well as Professor and Chair of the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, the exhibition stands as a demonstration of what human-machine collaboration is capable of offering not only to art, but also to a society that approaches it with cautious steps: “This exhibition is not a technophilic celebration of AI; it’s an attempt to assess what it means to live in a world in which these models are increasingly present.”
In line with the development of his various projects and authorships over the last ten years, Somaini curated a series of works created in the context of the evolution of visual culture, one that, emphasised by the rapid blooming and expansion of artificial intelligence in recent years, has changed the viewer's relationship with technology and provided a set of tools that still require familiarisation for optimal integration.
However, The World Through AI does not speak about the past but rather about how the future is shaping up based on what we have already seen and are currently witnessing. It addresses a future that is paving its way through alarming narratives about the replacement of human labour, but one in which Somaini and the group of selected artists seek to shed light on the possibilities that emerge when perspective is earned on the far-reaching impact of AI in the social, economic, and political spheres of the contemporary world. A future that is difficult to predict, yet one we can no longer escape from.
Regarding the selection of the more than thirty artists featured in the exhibition, Somaini told French journalist Judith Benhamou that they had to be creators with “a critical approach to AI (…) not necessarily ‘negative,’ but in a reflexive way.” As a result, the main criteria became understanding the medium and working with it independently. Some of the artists have incorporated AI as a support tool in the creation of their work—delegating parts of the artistic process—while others have approached the tool briefly, testing its functions and potential contributions, and drawing a clear distinction between analytical AI and generative AI.
Among its lineup, prominent names include Sasha Stiles, a Kalmyk-American poet and researcher, as well as a generative literature pioneer, who presents CURSIVE BINARY: ARS AUTOPOETICA, a primordial combination of binary code informed by the cuneiform system and Mongolian clear script, among other systems, to decipher the lyricism of human-machine collaboration, spanning both the past and imminent future. Likewise, the Jeu de Paume features the latest work by Grégory Chatonsky, La quatrième mémoire (The Fourth Memory), which uses recursive neural networks as tools for creation through a form of memory that offers the virtues of erosion, forgetfulness, and distortion, like a past that never truly happened.
Another intriguing addition to the exhibition is the series of “time capsules”: small showcases containing materials that explain the evolution of intelligent machines, the processes they have undergone to reach the present day, and a testimony of how fear towards technological disruption has been present throughout history (even back in the 1920s). At the same time, the exhibition illustrates how such disruptions have ultimately led to advances that benefit society, consumption, and artistic vision.
The World Through AI stands both as a reflection and a provocation. An invitation to reconsider our role in an abruptly shifting technological landscape. Far from offering definitive answers, it opens the door to questions that are as urgent as they are complex and will be open to the public until September 21st.
