Background

The Background

In a techno-society where digital media and artificial intelligence are so ubiquitous, it is inevitable that new experiments invest the art world. Algorithmic art, digital art, generations of artificial intelligence, robotic art - these are forms of expression rooted in mathematical and computer skills at a very high level. In some cases, the experiments are not borrowed from the manufacturing world, but rather the opposite: research in the artistic world anticipates industrial applications. Just think of Adversarial Generative Networks (GANs), which can reproduce the faces of non-existent people, created by the imagination of the GAN.

Anyway, a typical feature of digital worlds is reproducibility: algorithms can repeat themselves, digital copies can be transferred indefinitely from computer to computer, the memory of one computer can spill over into another. This inherent property of computational processes somehow "dilutes" the perceived value of the digital copy. Nothing becomes scarce, everything is at hand, retrievable when needed, incorruptible by time.

For years I have been working with "artificial intelligences" capable of guiding the hand of robots in the act of reproducing figurative works. I got robots to make watercolors and etchings. My goal was not so much the painting as the identification of aesthetic algorithms capable of capturing the artist's stroke, of capturing the secret of the balance between precision and gesture. The algorithms I produced, however, can repeat themselves; they are saved and stored on my hard drives. They do not possess the fragility typical of the human essence. Hence the need to create an algorithm that can "die".

For this performance, I created an algorithm that exists in a single digital copy; this copy is stored on a single hard drive. When the hard drive is destroyed, so is the digital essence that allowed the work to be created. Needless to say, the product of the work, the engraved plates, are unique and irreproducible. In other words, my intention is to give the digital product uniqueness, to give it an immutable corporeality, immune to the weakening of reproducibility.

The performance also has another purpose: to fuel the ethical debate surrounding the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence. In philosophy of mind, the concept of reductionism is often invoked. Reductionists argue that the human mind, including its feelings and consciousness, can be reduced to the mechanistic process of its neurons. From this point of view, if an electronic brain were sufficiently complex, it would have all the characteristics to be considered a living being. However, man possesses other qualities that contribute to his ontological essence. Death is one of them. Here, the implementation of algorithms or hardware/software combinations capable of dying brings the machine emotionally closer to the human.

The performance of aging and death of the "digital artist" has some parallels with other artistic experiences. William Utermöhlen was a British artist best known for a series of self-portraits made between 1995 and 2007, the year of his death. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1995. His self-portraits therefore had the virtue of fixing on canvas the synthesis of the relationship between artistic sensibility and cognitive degeneration....

Moreover, the death of an artist affects the perception of the value of his or her work. As the economists Unsprung and Wierman have noted, the price of a work of art rises sharply after the death of the author, although this increase is influenced by contingent factors such as fame, the rarity of the work, and the age of the artist. The key point, however, is that death has the power to alter the perceived value of the work itself (Heinrich W. Unsprung and Christian Wierman. Reputation, Price, and Death: An Empirical Analysis of Art Price Formation, 2008).

Series of self-portraits made by William Utermöhlen over a period of time from 1996 to 2007.