Flow
February 7th - April 7th, 2018
Art Basel Hong Kong
These free-floating projections of characters relate to Oursler's ongoing interest in our day to day interactions with technology and question the intelligence of A.I.-systems. The work depicts avatars or personifications of algorithmic systems meant to serve all manner of human needs. Ever since the program ELIZA (and more recently Siri, Alexa, and Echo) was generated to approximate a psychotherapist we have been slowly trained to imbue the computer with a pseudo-sentient manner. The artist takes a humorous approach to the human desires which are inevitably linked to artificial intelligence, such as self-help, new-age and motivational programs, all manner of social media, shopping and facial recognition. The characters, which are projected into the landscape, are meant to be rogue A.I. agents which attempt to interact with the viewers. They play with the notion of how artificial intelligence may help us achieve our goals or not. Artificial intelligence brings to light many questions regarding our coevolution with such systems. Most notably, will our creations replace us and become our final undoing? Or will we enter a utopian world of limitless knowledge and achievements? Are these stunning machines suppressing an entire generation’s creativity? Or are they moving us into humanity’s next phase? It is Oursler's perspective that in between these questions, A.I has begun to enter our world in many fascinating and banal ways which are open to speculation.