(edited by) Sabine Himmelsbach, Boris Magrini – Entangled Realities: Living with Artificial Intelligence / Leben mit künstlicher Intelligenz

edited-by-sabine-himmelsbach-boris-magrini-entangled-realities-living-with-artificial-intelligence-_-leben-mit-ku%cc%88nstlicher-intelligenz-christoph-verlag-merianok

Christoph Verlag Merian, ISBN-13: 978-3856169060, English, German, 224 pages, 2019, Switzerland

Artificial Intelligence is now in the limelight of art practice as it has been conceptually situated as the most imaginative current technology. Much like Virtual Reality in the nineties, it is not yet a mature technology (most of the corporate announcements are well crafted press releases), but it effectively triggers the public imaginary. Among the different inspired exhibitions, ”Entangled Realities” at the H3K in Basel has addressed the “conditions of our coexistence (with machines)”. Its catalogue has been expanded to include a few critical texts. The curators (Himmelsbach and Magrini) are engaging with the “reality forming effects of AI”. In their respective texts, the former gives extensive information about the curatorial process and the exhibited works, while the latter reconstructs the exhibition’s scientific and artistic context. There are three guest writers: Felix Stalder focuses on the opaqueness of AI deep processes, the ‘black boxes’, triggering plausible political scenarios, and the awareness of it; Matteo Pasquinelli presents an erudite and fascinating historical study on algorithms and their believable ‘intelligence’, starting from ancient Indian rituals; while Nora N. Khan explores the ontology of machine ‘violence’ and our needs in an intriguing dialogue, effectively completing this rich volume.