Kunstverein Hannover’s exhibition »Artistic Intelligence« explores the extent to which artists make use of the latest technical possibilities of artificial intelligence in their artistic practice. While artificial neural networks and the algorithmic processes that enable »machine learning« have long been established in industry and business, dominating everyday human life, the associated advantages and conveniences of these technologies are counterbalanced by forms of censorship and surveillance.
The exhibition brings together ten positions that have, in some cases, long questioned methods for making artificial-machine systems independent – as in the works of Harun Farocki and Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven. The supposed autonomous behavior of machines and omnipresence of artificial intelligence are made visible in works by Arcangelo Sassolino, Miao Ying, and Julia Zabowska, while access to large data pools as a prerequisite for computer-generated learning methods leads to amazing image output in contributions by Sofia Crespo, Mario Klingemann, and Anna Ridler. Matthew Plummer-Fernandez’s work looks at the far-reaching consequences of censorship and surveillance, while Helen Knowles examines future issues that may arise with the legal classification and moral handling of artificial intelligence.
These approaches uncover the profound technical transformation of our society and illuminate it from the artistic perspective. With »Artistic Intelligence«, Kunstverein Hannover continues a line of exploration put forward in the previous exhibitions »Digital Conditions« (2015) and »Digital Archives« (2016), which also dealt with the digital transformation of our society.