ARTIFICIAL FEAR, INTELLIGENCE OF DEATH - LAUREN HURET

There are numerous examples of rather unstable forms of artificial intelligence that are now part of our lives (Siri, search engines, chatbots…) dreamt up by an IT industry that is closely connected to the imaginary world of science fiction. Hollywood blockbusters on AI and the many rumours that abound on the subject have paved the way for an infinite number of shifts in interpretation, from paranoid stupor to the unspeakable, which also augur the vulgarisation of its underlying ideologies such as cybernetics and transhumanism.

These forms of non-organic intelligence are already surrounded with stories, behaviour patterns, personifications and political or social demands. The modalities of our co-evolution with these new entities need to be continually constructed, based on narratives, myths, re-appropriations and interpretations.

Working on these questions and in a critical approach, Lauren Huret travelled to San Francisco to carry out a field study in the form of conversations with philosophers, publishers, engineers, programmers and historians. The resulting artist’s book bears witness to the diversity of viewpoints she encountered and the complexity of trying to define the contours of what is at stake in terms of AI.

Visually this work is inspired by the iconography of Byte, a microcomputer magazine that covered the emergence of the personal computer between 1978 and 1986: Lauren Huret has produced a series of collages, to which she has added examples of adverts praising the merits – both human and magical – of the computer.

Lauren Huret was born in 1984 in Paris and now lives in Geneva. She graduated from the École de Beaux-arts de Bordeaux and the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève). She is the founder of a periodical entitled Superstition, as well as the Global Paranoia Poetry Club. Through video, collage, performances and texts, her work essentially explores the beliefs and contemporary tales associated with machines in general and new technologies in particular. Her work has been shown at the Kunstmuseum de Lucerne (during the Swiss Performance Prize), at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, the Magasin in Grenoble, Friart Ars Centre in Fribourg and at the Panacée in Montpellier.