Smart Hans

FILE 2024 | Installations
International Electronic Language Festival
Max Haarich (Project Smart Hans) – Smart Hans – Germany

The Smart Hans project is a synthetic reincarnation of Clever Hans, a horse that became famous in the early 20th century for apparently answering mathematical questions by tapping its hoof. The interactive installation features an animated horse that can guess any number in its mind through posture recognition. At the same time a fun joke and an illustration of why we worry about artificial intelligence.

Bio

Max Haarich is an artistic researcher, ethicist and consultant focusing on artificial intelligence and web3. He studied communication science at RWTH Aachen and critical thinking at the University of the Underground. After his studies, he researched artificial superintelligence at RWTH Aachen and later worked as a communications manager at Europe’s leading startup hub.

Credits

Team: Anja Borowicz Richardson (UK), Bruce Gilchrist (UK), Akshita Gupta (IND), Max Haarich (Artistic Lead/DE), Martina Huynh (NL), Asad Imtiaz (PAK), Muhammad Qasim Khan (PAK), Adrian Ludwig (DE), Pekka Ollikainen (FI), Raphael Pickl (DE).

Useless Hands

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Infratonal – Useless Hands – France

When our hands become useless, what will we choose to do with them? We can use AI to visualize the unthinkable, the strangely familiar yet indescribable forms and structures. Generative AI could be used as an amplifier of our ability to explore abstraction and surrealism rather than a simple mirror of our usual perceptions.

Bio

Infratonal is an artistic project led by Louk Amidou, a Paris-based multidisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of digital arts, electronic music and interaction design. He uses algorithms to create hybrid visual and sound pieces which aim to be performed by the human gesture as intangible instruments. He questions the artwork’s nature at the age of AI and the relationship between the artist and the algorithm.

Robinson
FILE FESTIVAL SAO PAULO 2016
The piece “Robinson” is part of Ting-Tong Chang’s new body of work investigating the history of automatons in Europe as a means of exploring utopian visions. The word “automaton” is often used to describe self-moving machines, especially those that have been made to resemble human or animal actions. From Jacques de Vaucanson’s Digesting Duck (1739) to Andreas Jakob Graf Dietrichstein’s Mechanical Theatre (1752), automatons have entertained kings and princesses, taught moral lesson to citizens and raised deep philosophical questions

Cryptic Ruins
It’s the year 21020 and a mysterious archaeological site has been uncovered in what was central London. A large communal structure seemingly dedicated to unproductive expending of energy from human bodies. Whilst we might easily identify it as a gym, our descendants are concerned with why it exists at all. By framing the 21st century compulsion towards physical fitness as a mysterious practice of the past that requires decoding, Deja’s playful film reveals something of the absurdity of contemporary urban life and questions the rationality of our obsessions.

Credo

A radio telescope scans the skys in search of signs of extraterrestrial life.
The received raw signals serve as input data for a neural network, which was trained on human theories and ideas of aliens. Now it tries desperately to apply this knowledge and to discover possible messages of other civilizations in the noise of the universe. Mysterious noises resound as the artificial intelligence penetrates deeper and deeper into the alien data, where it finally finds the ultimate proof.The sound installation revolves around one of the oldest questions of mankind – one that can never be disproved: Are we alone in the universe?

file sao paulo 2018
“Outrospectre” is an experimental proposal for a medical device aimed at reconciling people with death through simulating out-of-body experiences. In healthcare the majority of efforts and research focus on keeping people alive. The fear and experience of death is a mostly neglected topic. Recent (para) psychological research, however, suggests that the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body using virtual reality technology could help reduce death anxiety. “Outrospectre” explores the possible application of these findings in hospital surroundings where it could help terminal patients accept their own mortality with more comfort.
This project investigates unanswered questions about mortality and ‘end of life’.

Me, My Selfie and I
Katja is inspired by the influence of everydays’ digital technologies on society and with that the arising questions about the identity of our human body. She fuses everydays’ technology, the dancers’ body and the presence of the audience into unconventional performances. Who moves who?

Google red marble

Digital native et issu d’une famille d’agriculteur, Mathieu s’intéresse à l’influence des technologies sur la perception de notre réalité contemporaine. Il s’interroge sur la matérialité d’internet et ses représentations. Il cherche à traduire l’expérience du web surfer, l’imagination de l’internaute face à ce flux infini d’informations.
Dans ses projets se dégagent de façon récurrente des questions environnementales. Inspiré par la lecture de l’essai philosophique d’Ariel Kyrou « Google God » de 2010, il interroge cette image presque divine associés aux géants du web.
Il utilise comme médium les big datas. Via ses algorithmes qu’il développe, par des processus de recyclage et des analogies à la nature, il façonne des flux de données afin d’en créer des matérialisations tangibles. Abstractions, reliques, cristallisations ou fragment du World Wide Web, son travail protéiforme se matérialise principalement en sculptures et installations multimédia.
Influencé autant par l’histoire de l’abstraction, les artistes du Land Art, que par les Nouveaux Réalistes, ses créations sont associées au Culture Digital, au mouvement Post-Digital ou Post-Internet Art.

Yellow lambo
The piece, “YELLOW LAMBO” (2018)[…] is a reference to a half-serious joke in the crypto community about using profits to buy Lamborghinis.“I became familiar with #lambo as a declaration of success-identity, and because I always think in terms of how to distill emotions around value, I wanted to explore that,” Mr. Abosch said. He created another token, called YLAMBO, and turned its address into a physical sculpture in yellow neon. This sculpture then sold for $400,000 at a San Francisco art fair to Michael Jackson, the former chief operating officer of Skype. The meta-weirdness around the purchase of the art is at the heart of the questions Mr. Abosch wants to explore.

Hidden Gems
Transforming the mopo oil reserve base, south korean designer hyuntek yoon of nooyoon has created a cultural and recreational cluster on the site. Located in sangam, north west of seoul, the abandoned area was previously filled with waste until the 2002 work cup which saw it turn into an an ecological park, digital media city, and world cup stadium. ‘Hidden gem’ seeks to revitalize the last piece of waste-land for public use. The project is based on the following questions: how can five oil tanks be transform to embed recreational programs and how can multiple activities interrelate and operate with each other?