Exhibit of the European Platform for Digital Humanism
The European Platform for Digital Humanism is a collaboration of organisations across the EU. The project argues that ‘the cooperation of art and technology is a much-requested bearer of hope and a large number of EU projects and cooperation initiatives have set themselves the goal of strengthening the role of art, creativity and education in the development of the ideas, concepts and scopes of action necessary in the search for sensible data policies’ 1.
Therefore, the stated themes of the exhibition pertain to data capitalism and surveillance/privacy issues, and less about environmental issues, such as how the data consists of a material substrate of server farms, physical cable and the electrical resources to power the infrastructure. Therefore, I suggest that this understanding of the ‘digital society’, as long as it is unfettered from the material backbone of environmental resources, remains incomplete. This is borne out by the focus of some of the projects within this exhibition. Below, you will find some key themes, including AI/Machine learning, space, and a certain treatment of environmental issues.
Explore these selected themes from the European Platform for Digital Humanities exhibition:
Theme 1: AI and machine learning
At this exhibition, it was evident that AI and creativity featured as a key theme, with the A-MINT artificial music intelligence project by Alex Braga on display. The summary caption/abstract for the piece at the display notes how ‘A-MINT is a metaphor for a sustainable future, where man and machines work together in perfect symbiosis to cross a frontier that man alone could not dare’ 2. This boundary, for the project is that of musical improvisation, where the AI can understand human musical improvisation in real-time and thus also take part in the improvisation. It is described as ‘a trip into the unknown and unexplored territories and boundaries’ 3, in arguably a somewhat celebratory way. I suggest that as an exemplar of the focus on AI, this piece inadequately explores ideas of sustainability as described.
A-MINT artificial music intelligence project by Alex Braga
The focus on AI was further exemplified by the exhibition of Ai-Da, a robot who takes the form of a woman, and who creates paintings. The project is described as concerning the ‘ethics of our future technologies’ 4, and acknowledges the need to conceive of potential futures ‘as the world struggles to morph around a destabilizing environment’ 5. Furthermore, the project suggests that ‘ethical discussions are needed to direct the development of new technologies in a direction that protects rather than exploits the vulnerable sectors of our world, including animals and the environment’ 6.
While this was a worthy concept, the site visit revealed a fetishization about the advanced realism of the (arguably beautiful and gendered) robot, and ‘her’ capabilities in terms of painting. In fact, it was impossible to document the project through photography, as there was constantly a crowd around the robot, seemingly amazed at the advanced development of this device.
I therefore suggest that these two examples of AI-related projects are problematic in terms of how they frame environmental issues. While both projects reveal the very advanced state of AI development, they both name environmental sustainability, ethics, and unstable environmental futures without overtly engaging the audience in these matters. Rather, as presented, they are celebratory of technological development for the purposes of showing that AI can exhibit features akin to human creativity. While this in itself is notable, for the purposes of this research project, it is arguably problematic to invoke environmental issues in a passing way.
A similar, related theme of machine learning was also in evidence at this exhibition. In a project titled TeleAgriCulture_Rhizomatic Bias by Julian Stadon, Daniel Artamendi and V2 Lab for Unstable Media, the subject of bias in machine learning is articulated through biospheres. Thus, the project is set up such that remote biospheres in Rotterdam and Linz are able to communicate using sensory data. The algorithm running the communication is programmed with ‘traditional soil proverbs that are linked to class, wealth, luck, labor, productivity and land’ 7. Furthermore, this system learns to form relationships, and thus similar biospheres can ‘attack’ ones unlike them, or weaker them, in what is described as a form of ‘cyberbullying’ 8. While on the surface it appears that the use of living biospheres may have an ecological context, the project is concerned with machine learning, using biospheres as a metaphor to visibilise a social, rather than environmental issues. Thus, as outlined by the artists ‘these artistic provocations point at the much larger problems we face when our emotional biases and social constructions affect the way artificially intelligent systems evolve and impact our lives’ 9. While the two prior exhibits used environmental concerns in their project description, I suggest that this project goes further to potentially alienate an audience with environmental concerns. The project projects a sense of controlling basic ecosystems in order to make a point about machine learning. Thus, while asking the audience to consider the ethics of bias in machine learning, it does not consider the ethics of how the biospheres are artificially manipulated without an environmental message therein. Furthermore, by invoking ideas of rhizomes and rhizomatic bias in the title, there is a mistaken inferance that rhizomes, i.e. living stems and roots of plants, in themselves exhibit bias, an undesirable attribute.
TeleAgriCulture_Rhizomatic Bias by Julian Stadon, Daniel Artamendi and V2 Lab for Unstable Media
Theme 2 – space
A further theme in evidence at the European Platform for Digital Humanism was that of space exploration, and the implications of human and environmental interaction in space. The first such example was titled Food for Earthlings by Maggie Coblentz. This project makes the observation that ‘food is a key creature comfort in spaceflight, and it will play an even more significant role in long-duration space travel and future life in space habitats’ (10. Furthermore, the project also acknowledges ‘the advancement of deep space exploration’ as well as ‘an interplanetary space tourism industry’ promising ‘new cultural events and experiences’ 11. The project also promises ‘the evolution of a new space cuisine’ 12.
For the purposes of this project, I suggest that a suitable critique of this project is in its hubris around space exploration and flight. Such travel first, is only available to a tiny fraction of the elite, and therefore not relatable to a general audience. Second, in an environmental context (on earth) that sees massive loss of biodiversity and unfolding food insecurity, it is churlish to suggest that food production in space needs to be prioritised. Third, it ignores the unsustainability of the materiality of space flight itself. Therefore, I suggest that this neologising around potential space futures fails to acknowledge the materiality of actually existing terrestrial life for the majority of the world’s current and near-future population.
Food for Earthlings by Maggie Coblentz
A second example at this exhibit on a similar theme was titled Fluorovine by Harpreet Sareen. It is concerned with the apparent invisibility of the ‘physiological architecture of a living plant’ 13. Thus, on first impression, this project was potentially concerned with visibilising a key component of our (earthly) environment. However, the project is concerned with visibilising ‘fast and transient messenger signals invisible to the human eyes’ 14. To this end, the plant is modified so that in zero-gravity conditions a dye is produced, thus visibilising the signals that the plant is making under such circumstances. Thus, the project aims to contribute towards ‘the quest for exo-biology tools that grow plants’ 15.
Similar critiques of the previous project apply to this one, for the purposes of this research project, in that a concern for understanding plant growth in space is, for those with environmental concerns fraught with difficulties. These difficulties are, first, in the areas of priority of attention to environmental matters, in this case plant growth in hostile conditions of space prioritised over creating more habitable earthly spaces for biological life. Second, a critique lies in the hubris around developing space-related environments, when only a tiny fraction of the earth’s population can ever relate to it. Third is in the failure to critique the unsustainability of space exploration.
Fluorovine by Harpreet Sareen
Theme 3: Environmental themes
So far we have seen how the exhibit of the European Platform for Digital Humanism has to an extent celebrated the link between art and technology, with tendencies towards technological hubris, determinism and even, to an extent, elitism. This is also characterised by a naïve approach to the societal connection with the natural world where issues of sustainability or environmental crisis are mentioned in a passing way, or ignored. For the purposes of this research project, the initial findings are thus such that communicating environmental issues to publics is absent in favour of communicating speculative techno-futures.
However, some projects within the exhibition did attempt to approach issues of environmental crisis. One such example is titled The Form of Digital Nature: Perspectives of Digital Nature 1 by Yoichi Ochiai. This exhibit was a striking depiction of a robotic butterfly, juxtaposed with an almost identical, dead and preserved ‘real’ butterfly placed on a piece of wood. The initial effect to the audience is one of a sadness at the simulacra butterfly, which is activated by motion of a nearby viewer, as more animated and ‘alive’ than the dead butterfly installed on the wood. Thus, a sense of mourning for the loss of biodiversity is evoked by the jarring juxtaposition of the butterflies.
However, it is unclear if this is the intention of the artist, who describes this work as ‘a new perspective on nature, composed of digital media’ 16. Indeed, ‘digital nature’ is to be celebrated as ‘our current norms of physical and recognition abilities are transcended’, to a point where ‘the humanity of the future may live in Digital Nature, where the very concepts of nature, artificial objects, gravity and time are overturned’. The artist finishes with the open-ended statement that ‘here, the artificial printed butterfly and dead butterfly are exhibited in the same installation. These digital mimicries of nature show the alternative to our nature and perception’ 17.
I suggest that while the closing statement can be potentially read as a prod to thought or critique, the overall tone of the abstract is, similar to the other discussed exhibits, celebratory of technology to provide augmented, transcendental ‘opportunities’ to escape current materialities. Nonetheless, the overall visceral tone must be appreciated as mournful or solastalgic.
Artificial butterfly installation from The Form of Digital Nature: Perspectives of Digital Nature 1 by Yoichi Ochiai
Dead butterfly presentation on wood from The Form of Digital Nature: Perspectives of Digital Nature 1 by Yoichi Ochiai
The Form of Digital Nature: Perspectives of Digital Nature 1 by Yoichi Ochiai
A second installation that amongst other themes, did have an element of communication of environmental issues was within a larger project by Prix BLOXHUB Interactive who devised an installation titled How can we make cities more liveable using digital technology? While there was some attention paid to ‘smart’ cities, AI and machine learning, the exhibit also presented a manifesto for the liveable city of 2030. This manifesto included statements such as ‘The future is socially sustainable’, and ‘The future is human’ 18. However, it did not contain a statement around ecological sustainability. Notwithstanding this, the project presented an installation titled ’25 questions for cities’ aimed at evoking public debate around key urban issues of the near future 19. One such key question was identified as ‘Cities should monitor the carbon footprint of citizens to impose individual taxes’20.
I suggest that while it is outside the scope of this critique to answer such questions as they concern multiple issues of civil liberties, surveillance and climate change, nonetheless it foregrounds the role of carbon in the urban context in a way that communicates such environmental decisions to publics in a clear way. Thus, while it formed one part of a broader installation, it at least dealt with an environmental question without fetishising the role of ‘smart’ infrastructure alone to provide the solutions.
Manifesto from How can we make cities more liveable using digital technology? by Prix BLOXHUB Interactive
Installation of ’25 questions for cities’ from How can we make cities more liveable using digital technology? by Prix BLOXHUB Interactive
Installation detail of ’25 questions for cities’ from How can we make cities more liveable using digital technology? by Prix BLOXHUB Interactive, showing carbon-related question
One project that managed to combine issues of the consumerism, data surveillance and environmental implications of contemporary digital life was titled The Hidden Life of an Amazon User by Joana Moll. For this piece, the book The Life, Lessons & Rules for Success by Jeff Bezos was purchased on Amazon, while a program analysed the data transferred in the transaction. The project describes how ‘we were able to track 1307 different requests to all sort of scripts which equalled 8724 pages of printed code and 87.33MB of data’ 21. The project contends that this data is concerned with ‘continuous tracking of consumer behaviour in order to amplify the monetization of the user’ 22. Thus, the data is collected to inform Amazon about likely further purchases, and to promote such goods that the user may be likely to buy. In its own right this project is visibilising otherwise hidden aspects of digital consumer transactions. However, Moll also includes the energy cost of these transactions, in kilowatt hours.
I suggest that this project successfully integrates concepts of machine learning, data surveillance and environmental costs associated with the digital economy, in ways that previously identified projects failed to adequately address. In this way, a simple digital visualisation (notwithstanding the complex code behind the work!), may contribute to some user reflection about the energy journey of their browsing and purchasing through digital means that are often assumed to be ‘cleaner’ than their real-world counterparts.
- Reference: Ars Electronica 2019. Out of the box: the midlife crisis of the digital revolution, Exhibition catalogue, September 5-9 2019, Linz, Austria. Berlin: Hatje Cantz. p.82
- Reference: Ars Electronica 2019. Out of the box: the midlife crisis of the digital revolution, Exhibition catalogue, September 5-9 2019, Linz, Austria. Berlin: Hatje Cantz. p.190
- Reference: Ars Electronica 2019. Out of the box: the midlife crisis of the digital revolution, Exhibition catalogue, September 5-9 2019, Linz, Austria. Berlin: Hatje Cantz. p.190
- Reference: Ars Electronica 2019. Out of the box: the midlife crisis of the digital revolution, Exhibition catalogue, September 5-9 2019, Linz, Austria. Berlin: Hatje Cantz. p.101
- Reference: Ars Electronica 2019. Out of the box: the midlife crisis of the digital revolution, Exhibition catalogue, September 5-9 2019, Linz, Austria. Berlin: Hatje Cantz. p.101
- Reference: Ars Electronica 2019. Out of the box: the midlife crisis of the digital revolution, Exhibition catalogue, September 5-9 2019, Linz, Austria. Berlin: Hatje Cantz. p.101
- Reference: on-site abstract
- Reference: on-site abstract
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- Reference: on-site abstract
- Reference: on-site abstract
- Reference: on-site abstract
- Reference: on-site abstract
- Reference: on-site abstract
- Reference: on-site abstract
- Reference: on-site abstract
- Reference: Ars Electronica 2019. Out of the box: the midlife crisis of the digital revolution, Exhibition catalogue, September 5-9 2019, Linz, Austria. Berlin: Hatje Cantz. p.109
- Reference: Ars Electronica 2019. Out of the box: the midlife crisis of the digital revolution, Exhibition catalogue, September 5-9 2019, Linz, Austria. Berlin: Hatje Cantz. p.109