UNCANNY VALUES

An exhibition of the MAK in context of the VIENNA BIENNALE FOR CHANGE 2019: Brave New Virtues. Shaping Our Digital World (May 29–October 6, 2019 ) 

With the exhibition UNCANNY VALUES: Artificial Intelligence & You, the MAK is exploring one of the most important topics of the coming decades, one that has significant consequences for all areas of our lives: artificial intelligence (AI).

AI has long become a part of our lives, our social relationships, our political and economic activities. The question arises as to what kind of creature AI has already become and how it will develop further—and on what ideological basis it will do so.

Is AI democratic? Can AI be a more intelligent and just ruler than the politicians of today? Can it ever understand what it means to live together as humans? What responsibility do programmers and intelligent systems have? Who is more intelligent and more responsible?

In society, politics, the economy, and the environment—in short, as a civilization—we must develop new sets of values in collaboration with our machines. UNCANNY VALUES: Artificial Intelligence & You reveals a multitude of perspectives onto a field that is developing so rapidly that it is increasingly difficult to comprehend.

In order to understand, shape, and make meaningful use of AI’s and related technologies’ full potential, we need to develop a new kind of sensibility that this exhibition aims to cultivate. In a generously designed exhibition display, installations by 18 international artists and designers in various media—including seven new commissions—enter into dialog with examples and scenarios from current AI applications.

The exhibition focuses on questions relating to culture and technology, to what it means to be human, to power and control, and to finding our bearings in the uncanny valley of AI.

Curated by Paul Feigelfeld, Media Theorist, and Marlies Wirth, Curator, Digital Culture and MAK Design Collection

With contributions by Rachel Ara, automato.farm, Mladen Bizumic, Tega Brain, Julian Oliver and Bengt Sjölén, James Bridle, Giulia Bruno and Armin Linke in collaboration with Luc Steels, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, Simon Denny, Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea E. Manning, Constant Dullaart, Lynn Hershman Leeson, David Link, Jonas Lund, Trevor Paglen, Philipp Schmitt and Steffen Weiss, Superflux, Jorinde Voigt

Exhibition design: Some Place Studio, Vienna/New York (Bika Rebek, Daniel Prost)
Graphic and Interaction Design: Process Studio (Martin Grödl, Moritz Resl)
Scientific consulting: Christoph Engemann

VIENNA BIENNALE FOR CHANGE 2019: Brave New Virtues. Shaping Our Digital World
May 29–October 6, 2019 
viennabiennale.org
MAK.at

*AImoji, AI-generated emoji. The Vienna graphic and interactive design firm Process Studio trained a neural network to learn from a database of thousands of common emojis how to create its own variations of these digital faces. Every AI-generated emoji shows still unfamiliar and sometimes uncanny “artificial” emotions.

Key sponsor
ERSTE GROUP