The Imitation Game

×

Expand

Sougwen Chung, "Omnia per Omnia," 2018, video still (courtesy the artist )

DeepDream, BIG, *airegan. The list of artists and designers included in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s latest exhibition, The Imitation Game: Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, features names that sound as futuristic and tech-centric as the show itself. Yet, one of the joys of this show, on until Oct. 23, is how far back in time the curators reached for their exploration of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on the imagery we now consume.

Case in point: a clunky, Roomba-like “cybernetic Moth” from 1950. The Moth is displayed on a television (itself a bulky, vintage looking object) along with its creator, Norbert Wiener. Made up of a wheeled-trolley and a painted shell, Wiener’s Moth is an early robot designed to move in the direction of bright light – hence the name. 

×

Expand

Ben Bogart, “Watching (2001: A Space Odyssey),” 2018, HD video still (courtesy of the artist)

It’s one of 20 “objects of wonder” that set the stage for the exhibition, along with clips from classic films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner. This area has a Science World feel, including an interactive display where visitors can navigate a large screen with waves of their hands. 

It’s always fascinating to explore how people in the past imagined the future. In the case of The Imitation Game, a quick survey of the roots of Artificial Intelligence grounds the rest of the show in something endearing and almost quaint. When viewed through the lens of a goofy mechanical moth, AI loses some of its sinister edge. 

Expand

Scott Eaton, “Entangled II,” 2019, 4k video still (courtesy the artist)

The potential of AI to act as a creative collaborator, even a companion, is a theme that runs through the show. One artist, London-based Scott Eaton, uses a neural network to create works that combine the tones and shapes of the human body with his hand-drawn sketches. The results are lumpy, humanoid blobs straight from uncanny valley. Of course, collaborators need not collaborate equally, but I was stuck by just how much the human creators of these works can be seen as one half of an AI/human duo. 

When I visited, Yoko Ono’s Growing Freedom was still on display on the gallery’s main floor. Her work makes gentle requests of viewers, whether to mend bits of dinnerware with twine or write fond memories on sticky notes. Just one floor above, The Imitation Game frames participation in a different way. One piece created by students from Vancouver’s Centre for Digital Media, aptly called Creepers, charts the movements of gallery goers on a screen. Here, viewers participate in the creation of an artwork in the same way many of us participate in the gathering of online data ­– that is, unconsciously. 

I thought immediately of an article I’d read that morning about the newest incarnation of Whole Foods, an experimental shopping experience recently unveiled in Washington, D.C. In this Whole Foods, shoppers do not purchase items at a cash register. Instead, their movements are observed by an array of sensors and cameras. Later, their Amazon accounts are charged for purchases, down to the head of lettuce, another example of how "visual culture" can be all but invisible when it comes to AI interceding in daily life.      

×

Expand

Epic Games, “MetaHuman Creator,” 2022, video excerpt (courtesy of Epic Games)

In his remarks at the show’s media preview, senior curator Bruce Grenville framed The Imitation Game as one of a series of shows the gallery has devised to explore contemporary visual culture, while co-curator Glenn Entis emphasized its educational aims. 

Personally, I loved the focus on visual culture and the idea of a cityscape or a cyberscape (where is the separation between those two?) as an ever-evolving project, with us as both audience and creator. The Imitation Game demystifies this dynamic slightly, but not so much that the subject loses any of its strange magnetism. ■

The Imitation Game: Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence at the Vancouver Art Gallery from March 5 to Oct. 23, 2022.

PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter.