In her contribution, artist Rosi Grillmair will present the development process and implications of the artistic project connect.experience (2021) as well as talk about the reciprocal adaptation of humans and AI technologies in their daily entanglements in artificial environments.

When the project was developed in March 2021 during a residency at osmo/a (Ljubljana, SI) organised by Ljudmila Laboratory and Projekt Atol Institute, it consisted of 7 interactive pieces in a parkour-like structure. The exhibition invited the visitor to performatively“become”one of the algorithms or services in question. The project was created as an interactive way to demonstrate human compliance when working with apps and services that incorporate forms of“intelligent”or human-like behaviour. For instance, when we help Google Street View identify cars, traffic lights and number plates, playfully solve algorithmic tasks in gaming apps, speak more clearly when using a voice interface or are more patient when we are talking to a bot.

While the promotional address and the first part of the exhibition promised an entertaining and playful experience, the narrative and the atmosphere of the visitor’s path became dimmer and the viewing instructions suggested the visitor to work harder and do better. In the end, the visitors would see a scoreboard of how well they did and were asked to try again and improve their performance. Indirectly, the setup encouraged visitors to ask how much compliance they already put into their daily interactions with machines. Tasks that we normally do on a device, like selecting by clicking or identifying objects for an image recognition service, were extracted from their digital habitat and transferred into the gallery space as minimal conceptual forms, like identifying objects by pointing at windows or printed pictures.

* photo: Katja Goljat