35C3 - The good, the strange and the ugly in 2018 art &tech

35C3 preroll music

Herald Angel: The next talk will be given
by Régine Debatty and she will be talking

about the goods the strange and the ugly
in art and science technology in 2018. Big

applause to Régine

Applause

Sound from video

Régine: This was not supposed to
happen, I am sorry. Hello everyone. So my

name is Régine Debatty. I'm an art critic
and blogger. Since 2004 I've been writing

"we make money not art" which is a blog
that looks at the way artists, designers

and hackers are using science and
technology in a critical and socially

engaged way. So a few weeks ago some of
the organizers of the Congress e-mailed me

and they asked me if I could give a kind
of overview of the most exciting and

interesting works in art and technology in
2018. And on Monday when I started working

on my slides I was really on a mission to
deliver and then we had the intention

to give an overview of the best of art
and tech in 2018. But somehow things got

out of hand. I started inserting words
that are a bit older and also I could see

a kind of narrative that emerged. So the result is going to be a

presentation where I will still show some
of the works I found very interesting over

this past year. But they're going to be
embedded into a broader narrative. And this

narrative is going to look at the way
artists nowadays are using science and

technology to really explore and expand
the boundaries and the limits of the human

body. But also they use science and technology
to challenge intelligence or at least the

understanding we have of human
intelligence. So Exhibit 1 it's "Face

Detected". It's actually I wouldn't say it
was one of my favorites work from 2018

but it's definitely by one of my favorite
artists. So that's why it's in

there. So the setting is quite easy to
understand. Thérise Deporter, that's the name of the artist

had a solo show a couple of months
ago at the New Art Space in Andover and

install these blocks of clay on
tables and then invited artists sculpters

to come and do portraits of people and
start shaping their head. And of course

you know the process was followed by the
audience but it was also

followed by face recognition software. And
as soon as the software had detected a

face in the sculpture the Artist would
receive a message that say: Stop, we

have detected a human face. And what is
interesting is that

laughter

there are several - I mean, there's worse -

According to the face recognition system

- because they work with different
parameters and they've been programmed by

different programmers so they don't
necessarily - they're not as fast as, some

are faster than others to recognize a face,
some have different parameters than

others. So that's why the results are
always so different. But the reason why I

found this project worth mentioning
is because it shows the increasingly big

space that is called artificial
intelligence. You can call it algorithm,

big data or software. It shows the
increasingly big role that systems and

machines are taking into culture and the
place they're taking into spheres that

until not so long ago we thought were
really the apanage and exclusivity of

humans. So for example creativity,
innovation, imagination and art. And

nowadays pretty banal I mean no one is
going to be surprised if you're listening

to music and someone tells you: Oh
it's the music that's being composed

actually by an algorithm or this is a
poem or a book that's been written

by a machine. I mean it's becoming
almost mainstream. And this is happening

also in the world of visual art. And we've
had a few examples this year. If you look

at the newspaper like if a mainstream
newspaper or we had regularly news

saying oh this algorithmic has made this
masterpiece. And one of the most recent

example was this stunning portrait of a
gentleman that made the headlines because

it was the first portrait that was made by
an algorithm that was sold at Christie's

And Christie's is a famous auction house. And
it also made the headlines not only

because he was the first one but it sold for a surprisingly high price like

something like forty times the original
estimate. This painting made by an

algorithm created by a Paris based
collective. So it sold for almost half a

million dollar. And if I have to be honest
with you I cannot think of any work that's

been mostly done by an algorithm that have
really impressed me and move me. But it

seems that I am in the minority because
you might have heard of this. These

scientific experiments where computer
scientists at Rutgers University in USA.

They made this program that could
replicate just make and invent abstract

paintings. And then they asked people like
human beings to have a look at the

paintings made by the computer. But they
mixed it, like I said they were showing

to people they mix it with paintings that
had really been done by human beings that

had been exhibited at the famous art fair Art
Basel. And they asked them how they react

and which one according to them had
been done by a human. And it turned out

that people responded fairly well to the
paintings that had been done by this

computer system. They tended to prefer
them. They found them this odd. They

described them as being more communicative and
more inspiring. So you know maybe one day

I will be impressed but so far I would say
I would not be worried if I were an

artist. I'm not going to say to artists or
you know very soon machines are going to

take your job. Well maybe if you make that
kind of painting yeah maybe you should be

worried. But the kind of artist I'm
interested in. I really don't like it.

Artists I'm interested in. I really trust
them to keep on challenging computer

system. I trust them to explore and
collaborate with them and use them to

expand their artistic range. And most of
all I trust them to keep on sabotaging

and hacking and subverting these computer
systems. And so yeah I'm not worried at

all for artists but maybe I should be
worried for art critic. Because a few years

ago so it's 2006 and even in the
artificial intelligence time it's really

really old. So in 2006 at the Palais de Tokyo
in Paris an artist was showing a program

that was generated automatically. Text
written by art critique and I'm sorry but

the example is in French. But if you
read French. And if you use the kind of

press releases and "blah" they give you that
had been written by art critique. It is

really the kind of thing they work. It is
so incredible you know it's the kind of

inflated rhetoric and uses of vague terms
and also constantly referencing some fancy

French philosopher. So it really really
worked. So personally I would be more

worried for my job than for the job of the
artist. Anyway this is another work I

really like in 2018 and it's one of
these work that challenges and play and

try to subvert artificial intelligence and
in particular the so-called intelligent or

home assistance which is Alexa or Siri. So
you may know the artist is Mediengruppe

Bitnik. They collaborated with a DJ and
electronic music composer called Low Jack

and they made an album to be played
exclusively for Alexa and Siri all this

kind of devices. And we listen to a
track in a moment. And what did the

music does is, it tries to interact and
make Alexa react. So it asked

questions to Alex. It gives order to
Alex or Siri or whatever it's called. And

it's also trying to express and convey and
communicate to these devices the kind of

anxieties and ease and doubts they have
the artists have. And some of us have

around these so-called intelligent home
assistant. Whether it's they're frightened

about the encroachment of privacy and
unreliability and the fact that they are

called smart. So that we kind became of lower
guard and implicitly start to trust

them. So I'm going to make you listen to
one of the tracks. There are three of them

- at least they sent me three of them.
Played music track: Hello!

music

High speed intelligent personal assistance all
listening to everything I say. I brought

you into my home. You scary. Alexa, Prime's
new in time is now and all forever.

music

Alexa, I used to bark commands on you. Now I say
"please" and "thank you". Never mess with

someone who knows your secrets. Siri,
there is no way far enough to hide. Ok,

Google - are you laughing at me? You used
to answer that. Now, you disengage. Never

enough digital street smarts to outsmart
Alexa. Alexa? Alexa? Hey, Alexiety, I want

my control back. I want my home back.
Siri, delete my calender. Siri, hold my

calls. Siri, delete my contacts. Ok,
Google, what's the loneliest number? Ok,

Google, stop! Ok, Google, stop! Ok,
Google. Hello! Please, stop. Alexa, help!

Alexa, disable Uber. Alexa, disable
lighting. Alexa, disable Amazon music

unlimited. Alexa, quit! Hey, Siri!
Activate airplane mode. If you need me,

I'll be offline, in the real world.
R: And that's it for this one.

Next track playing

R: Oh, my god, what is this? That is
why...? laughing My boyfriend is

watching, he's doing to love so much.
Yeah, let's be serious with a bit of art

and tech, shall we? So, there are two
reasons why this work is interesting. The

first one is that you don't really need to
have one of these devices at home to have

fun because it's been actually
conceived to be played as loud as

possible. So, you don't need to have to
have one of these devices but you

can put the music very loud, open the
window and hopefully it is going to

interact with the devices of your
neighbors and mess a bit with their

domesticity. The other thing that is

interesting is that of course Alexa has
been designed to appear as close to a

human as possible. So each time the record
is asking some question the answer going

to change slightly because it's the way
it's been programmed. Then also because

each time there is an update in the
program and so might change. And also as I

said the artist made this record to
communicate their doubts and anxieties

around this smart system because there's a
few problems around these systems. One of

them is as I'm sure you know
it's about surveillance because they come

with corporate systems of surveillance
that are embedded into the hardware. And

the software. And we may not realize it
until, you know, sometimes when you open -

one day we opened the pages of a newspaper
and this is a story that appeared on the

Verge a few days ago and it's the story of
a German citizen who e-mailed Amazon and

say look Amazon I want to know all the
data you've collected about me over these

past few years. And then you received
these data except that he received the

wrong data. He received 1700 Alexa voice
recordings but he doesn't have an Alexa.

These were not his data. So he wrote back
to Amazon and says "Oh look I think there

is a problem there". Amazon never answered
back. So what did the guy do? He went to a

German newspaper and the reporters managed
to analyze the data. And they managed to

identify who the original owner of the
data was and who his girlfriend is and who

his circle of friends is. And you know if
you couple all the data from Alexa with

what is already available for everyone to
see on Facebook and other forms of social

media, you get kind of a scary and worrying
picture so you understand why artists and

other people might be worried and anxious
around Alexa. And so they're called smart

or intelligent devices, but sometimes they
give us advices that may not be, that I

would say, judicious and smart, such as
the one you might have heard of "Alexa's

advice to kill your foster parents". And
also they don't necessarily react to the

person they're supposed to obey. So that
like almost every month there is a story

in the newspaper. So this is the story of
Rocco the parrot and Rocco really when

he's alone at home and his owner has left
it's singing - it imitates very well.

There are videos of Rocco imitating the
voice of Alexa, it's really kinny. But

he also plays his older like, it doesn't
want to but, for example, he added to the

Amazon shopping basket of its owner
broccoli and watermelons and kites and ice

cream. And there are stories like that all
the time in the newspaper, when the TV

presenter talks about, say, "Okay Google
something or Alexa do something", and if

people are watching the TV and Alexa is in
the room Alexa is going to perform this

action or order some goods online. So
as you see this so-called smart system

isn't smart enough to differentiate
between the actual human being that's in

the room and that they should obey or they
should answer to, and voices that come

through the radio or the TV or the voices
of the pet. So if on the one hand

intelligent machines can be confused, I
have the feeling that also as human being

we are confused when it comes to, you
know, as soon as you throw in the arena

the words artificial intelligence, most
people, not you I'm sure, but most people

are ready to believe the hype. And a good
example of that, I would say, is you know

we keep reading how in China they have
this super sophisticated and highly

efficient networks of surveillance of CCTV.
And how they have face recognition systems

that are really really high hand and
highly sophisticated. So that is the

theory but the reality is that the
technology has limitations and also

limitations linked to bureaucracy and some
of the data in the files I've seen not

been digitalized. So sometimes the work of
the police is not aided by sophisticated

CCTV and their face recognition software,
but just consists of going through old

people files and photos. And yet, maybe
that doesn't matter if you know if the

system is not fully functional, because in
the case of surveillance what matters is

that we think that we might at some point
be under the gaze of surveillance that

might be enough to keep us docile and
compliant. Also, we are being told that

very soon we just have to wait for them to
be launched on the market. We're going to

have some fantastic autonomous car that's
going to drive us seamlessly from one part

of the town to the other one. And in
reality, we are still training them, you

and I, when we get these pop up images and
we are asked by the system to identify all

the squares where there is a shop window,
where there is a traffic sign or where

there is another vehicle. Where I want to
go with this is that there is still a lot

of human beings, a lot of human clocks
behind the machines, because artificial

intelligence is nothing without data, and
data is pretty useless if it's not been

targged. And so you see the emergence of
data tagging factory in China and it's

actually the new faces of outsourcing in
China, where you have people who spend the

whole day behind computer screen adding
dots and descriptions to images and

photo. And so artificial intelligence that
was supposed to, you know, free us from

very monotonous, mind-numbing and boring
work is still generating for us a lot of

this boring work. And these invisible
people behind artificial intelligence is

what Amazon, which is Amazon Mechanical
Turk, but it's what Amazon call

artificial intelligence. Some could photo
mission, and some of the characteristic of

this hidden human labor for the
digital factory is that it's, one, the

hyper fragmentation of the work and
because it's like the work is divided in

small chunks, it's loses a lot of his
prestige, a lot of its value, so people

are underpaid and what is a bit
frightening is that this kind of work

culture is actually creeping into the
world of creative people and freelancing

and you have platforms such as this one,
called Fiverr where it's also a

crowdsourcing platform where you can buy
the services of a person who is going to

design for you the logo of your new
company, or a birthday card, or a business

card, or do translation for you or shoot a
testimonial for your products and there is

one example there and someone who advertise
that they will design for you two

magnificent logos in 48 hours. And the
price that's it at five dollars, that's

very low - and the characteristic
of this kind of company is this scale of

crowdsourcing so-called services is that
they ruthlessly rely on precarity and

Fiverr recently had these ads, where
they were basically glorifying the idea of

working yourself to death. And then this.
Well I'm going to the third work I really

like in 2018. It was released a few months
ago. It's a work by Michael Mandiberg and

he wanted to make a portrait of the hidden
human being behind the digital factory.

And to do so he really wanted to recreate
or to modernized the iconic film by Charlie

Chaplin. Modern Times. It's a film from
1936 which was you know it was the seventh

year of the Great Depression. People
were struggling, being unemployed,

starving and having difficulty to get through
life. And Michael Mandiberg made an

update of this film, by... First of all he
wrote the code and the code cut the film

of Charlie Chaplin into very short clips
of a few seconds and then Michael

Mandiberg contacted people. He
found people on this platform on

Fiverr and he asked them, he gave
each of them a short clip. And

he asked them to recreate it as well
as they could. And that's what they did.

And Michael Mandiberg, I'm going to show
an extract. Yeah you will see, he had no

obviously no control over the location, he
had no control about around the production

choice. So hopefully I'm going to find
the correct video and not a fitness video.

So here's an extract.

music plays

I think you've got the point here. Good.
So with this work Michael Mandiberg tried

to do a kind of portrait of these hidden
digital factory and of its human clocks

But the portrait is done by the
freelancers, by the workers themselves and

you can see the result is kind of
messy and chaotic geographically disperse

and hyper-fragmented. So that it's added
characteristic, of the digital factory. So

carrying on with the world that is hidden,
I'd like to speak briefly about social

media content moderators. Maybe you know
this story because imagine that in

Germany, I was listening to an interview
with a woman who had work as a social

media content moderator for Facebook in
Germany and she was explaining what kind

of work she was doing. It doesn't happen
very often that you have testimony, because

usually the worker have to sign a
nondisclosure agreement. But she was

explaining that, how difficult the work is
because every single day, each of the

moderator has to go to 1300 tickets. So
1300 cases of content that have been

flagged as inappropriate or disturbing,
either automatically or by another users.

So you know that doesn't leave a lot of
time to have a thorough analysis.

And indeed she was explaining that human
reflection is absolutely not encouraged and

that you have all the process of
judging, you have only a few seconds to

judge whether or not the content has
to be blocked or you could stay on

Facebook. And all the process of the
reflection is actually reduced to a series

of automatisms. And the interesting part
for me was when she was explaining that at

night she was still dreaming of her work, but
where some of her co-workers were dreaming

of the kind of horrible content they have to
moderate, she was explaining how she was

actually dreaming of doing the same
automatic gesture over and over again. And

that's how you realized, that all these
big companies, they wish they could replace

workers by machines, by algorithm, by
robots. But some of the tasks

unfortunately the robots or the
algorithm cannot do them yet. So they have

to rely on human being with all the
other unreliability and propension

to contest and rebell and maybe
laziness and all their human defects. So

the solution they found was to. Sorry?
Okay I thought someone had asked me

something. Where was I? So the solution,
yeah solution they found was to reduce

these people to machines and automate
their work as much as possible. And so

that's the work as a Facebook content
moderator. And just as is apparent as you

can see how their work ambience and
environment is different from the fancy

and glamorous image we see in architecture
magazine, each time one of these big media

companies will open up headquarters
somewhere in the world. But anyway to come

back to the work of Facebook content
moderator I think the way the work is

automated can be compared to the way the
work of the employees in Amazon warehouses

are being automated. As you know
they have to wear this kind of mini-

computer on their wrist that identifies
them, that tracks them, that give them all

the... monitor them, measure their
productivity in real time. And also like,

allows Amazon to really remote control
them and so they work in a pretty

alienating environment. Sometimes popup
online pretend that Amazon they feel this

one is particularly creepy, because they
were thinking of having, of, you know,

making this wrist computer even
more sophisticated and using haptic

feedback so that they could direct and
remote control even more precisely the

hands of the worker. So you see there is
this big push towards in certain contexts

towards turning humans into robots. And
you know we're always mentioning Amazon,

but this is the kind of work culture that
is being adopted elsewhere in France, but

also in other European countries. There
are services such as the Auchan Drive. So

if you're a customer and you don't
want to go to the supermarket to do your

groceries, you do your groceries online
and 10 minutes later you arrive on the

parking lot of your supermarket and
someone will be there with your grocery

bags ready. And I was listening to
testimonies by people who used to work

at Auchan Drive and as you can see they
wear all the same microcomputer

that is also monitoring precisely all
their movement. And the thing that I found

most disturbing was when they were
explaining, that they don't, when they get

the list of of items they have to pick up,
they don't get you know a list that say

you have to take three bananas and two
packs of soy milk. No they just get

numbers that say good to this alley
another number that say this is

the shelf where you have to take the item
and the number corresponding to the

precise item on the shelf. And they also
they are submitted to very strict rules of

being as fast as possible and I shouldn't
laugh, but they were explaining the kind

of if they rebelled the kind of vengeance
their boss would have. And if they are

particularly rebellious, they send them
into frozen food so they spend the day in

the cold. And I'd like to have a sharp
look with you at people who also want to

be closer to machines and robots. But
according to their own terms and they want

to have total control over it and it's
something they do voluntarily and it's the

community of so-called grinders. So these
people who don't hesitate to slice open

their body to put, insert chips and
devices and magnets, into it to either

facilitate their life or expand their
range of perception. And actually the

first time I heard about about them was at
the Chaos Communication Congress back a

long time ago in 2006 when a journalist
Quinn Norton had installed a magnet under

her fingers and she could sense the
electromagnetic fields. I found that very

fascinating. But as you can see the
aestetic is, it's pretty rough and gritty.

It's very, it's a vision of a world to
come and of a communion with the machine

that is completely aesthetically it's very
different from the one that you saw by the

Silicon Valley. But I find it equally
fascinating how they take control of the

way they want technology to be closer to
technology. Yes. So in the third part of

my talk, the first part was about this
confusion we have between the intelligence

of machine and human intelligence. The
second part was about the robotisation of

the human body. And the third and
last part I would like to have a look

and I don't know the type of hybridisation of
bodies, but this time not between the human body

and the machine, but human body and other
animal species. So we may have actually

been tinkering with their bodies for
decades since the 60s when they started

taking the contraceptive pills and also
people going through want to change

gender, they also tinker with their body
and the first transgender celebrity I

recently found out was George Jorgensen
Jr. who started his adult life as a G.I.

during World War 2 and ended his life as a
female entertainer in the US. And while

assembling the slides I could not resist
adding this one because I saw it a couple

of weeks ago in an exhibition - the World
Press Photo Exhibition. And it's a photo

that was taken in Taiwan and Taiwan is
actually, it is a major on of the top

tourist destination for medicine. People
fly to Taiwan because you get, you can get

very good health care and and pretty
affordable surgery. And one of the hot

niche in surgery for this kind of tourist
is actually gender reassignment surgery.

So in this photo you have, the operation
is finished and the surgeon is showing to

the patient her new vagina. And
before undergoing this surgery the

patient of course had to go through a
course of... had to take hormones and

series of hormones and one of them is
estrogen and estrogen is the primarily

sex female hormone, it's the hormone
responsible for the feminization of the

body and also sometimes of the emotion.
And, if you are a guy in the room you're

probably thinking, well I'm going to leave
the room because I don't care about

estrogen. What does it have to do with me?
And I'm going to spend the next few

minutes trying to convince you that you
should you should care about estrogen.

Because even fish care about estrogen it
turns out. At least the biologist. You

might have heard a few years ago that
biology started to get very worrying

because they discovered that some fish
population, especially the male ones, were

getting feminized that their sexual organs
were both sometimes male and female and

they were worried about it and they
discovered that it was the result of

contact with xenoestrogen. And
xenoestrogen, everywhere in the

environment, and they affect not only fish
but all animal species including human

species. So when I say that they are
everywhere in the environment, it's really

everywhere - only 10 minutes - They are
very often the result of industrial

process so for example you can find them
in recycled plastic, in lacquers, in beauty

products, in products you use to clean the
house, in wheat killers, insecticides, in

PVC, they are pretty much everywhere.
Sometimes they are released by

industries into the watersteam and I
wanted to show you again abstract art.

It's a work by Juliette Bonneviot, and she
was really interested in these

xenoestrogens. So she looked around her in
the environment where they were present

then and she took all these, some of these
xenoestrogen sources I've just mentioned

and she separated them according to colors
and then she crush them and turn them into

powder. They then mixed them with PVC and
silicone which also contain xenoestrogens

and then pulled them onto canvas and then
you have this kind of portrait of the

silent colonizing chemicals that is
modifying our body and the kind of things

they can do to the human body have already
been observed. So they're linked to higher

cases of cancer for both men and women,
lowering of IQ, problems in fertility,

early onset of puberty, etc. So we
should really be more vigilant around

xenoestrogen and in the next few minutes
I'd like to mention briefly two projects

where women artist exploring how
their hormones, more general their female

body can be used to have other kinds of
relationships with non-human animals.

So the first is a project by Ai Hasegawa,
she was in her early 30s and she had that

dilemma. She thought maybe, maybe it's
time to have a child but do I really want

to have a child because it's a lot of
responsibility and there is already

overpopulation. But on the other hand if I
don't have a child it means that all these

painful periods would have been there in
vain. She was also faced with another

dilemma, is that she really likes to eat
endangered species and in particular

dolphin and shark and whales and so on the
one hand she liked eating them. And on the

other hand she realized that she was
contributing to their disappearance and

the fact that their extinct. So she found
this solution, and this is a speculative

project, but she saw it as a solution
maybe she could give birth to an

endangered species, So maybe she could
become the surrogate mother of a dolphin.

So using her belly as a kind of incubator
for another animal and to do this she

consulted with an expert in synthetic
biology and an expert in obstetric who

told her that technically it's possible,
that she would just have to resort to

synthetic biology to modify the placenta
of the baby. She would not have to modify

our own body but she just had to modify
the placenta of the baby to be sure

that all the nutrients and the hormones
and the oxygen and everything is

communicated between the mother and the
baby except the antibodies because they

could damage the body. So in a scenario,
even if everything goes well, she gives

birth will lovely healthy baby
Maui dolphin. And she gives it the

antibodies through fat milk containing
these antibodies and she see grow. And

once it's an adult he could be released
with a chip and under its skin. And then

when once it's fished she can buy it and
eat it and have it again inside her own

body. Well, when I first heard about the
project, I can tell you I was not

laughing. I said it was really really
revolting. But the more I thought about,

it the smarter I saw this project was,
because I understand it doesn't sadly make

a lot of sense to give birth to yet
another human being that is going to put

strain on this planet. So why not dedicate
your reproductive system to the

environment and use it to help save
endanger species. And I have five minutes

left so I have to make some really really
drastic choices. I wanted to talk about

Maja Smrekar. I'm going to do it. So she
had a series of projects, where she is

exploring the core evolution of dogs and
human and to make it very very brief. One

of her performances consisted in spending
four months in a flat in Berlin with her

two dogs. One of them is an adult Byron
and the other one is a puppy called Ada.

And she tricked her body by some
physiological training and also by eating

certain food and using a breast pump. She
treats her body to stimulate the hormone

that make the body of a woman lactate,
even if she wasn't pregnant, so that she

could breastfeed her puppy. And these two
projects I saw, were really are really

interesting, because it shows the power of
the female body. It shows that what

prevents women from having this kind of
transgender motherhood isn't is that

technology. It's just it's just society
and the kind of limits that our culture is

bringing on what woman can or should do
with her body. And I also like this

project, because the kind of question our
anthropocentrism and our tendency to think

that all the resources of the world are made
for us and not for other living creatures.

So just as a parent this if you're
interested in estrogen and xenoestrogen

I would recommend that you have
a look at the talk that Mary Maggic give last

year had the Chaos Communication Congress
where she was talking about estrogen and

then linked the history and links
to her work as a biohacker. So now my

conclusion... maybe you're already wondering
why is she talking to us about artificial

intelligence and transspecies motherhood?
What does it have to do with each other? I

would say a lot! Because we have the
feeling that the digital world sometimes

we tend to forget that behind it
there is a material world that to have

artificial intelligence. You need
the infrastructure, you need the devices,

you need the server farm, you need spaces
to manage these data. Physical spaces.

And I would say it's a bit like the human
brain. The human brain is kind in dimensions

pretty small, but apparently it's it eats
up a fifth of all the energy that our body

consume. And so that means that artificial
intelligence is, it needs like a very

heavy infrastructure, energy, hungry,
server farms and I'm sure you've seen all

the PR stunts and the press releases of
Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. promising

you that they're transitioning that
they're going to use green energy, but the

energy is not still green and they're still
using a lot of fossil fuel to pull out.

Their server farms to make the devices
that we use. We still need minerals that

have to be dug up from the ground,
sometimes in really horrible conditions.

This is the coltan mine in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. The minerals we

use, well, they are not infinite and,
unless and it's not for tomorrow, unless we

go and get these minerals in the asteroid
or in the deep sea. We are going to get

into trouble very very fast and I don't
have the time for this one. But trust me

the resources are not infinite. And then,
refind them and produce them. That's very

very damaging for the environment. Yes. So
I have the feeling sometimes that we are a

bit like the golfers in this image, that
when I go to some, not all of them, but

some tech conference or art and tech
conferences, I have the feeling that we

are kind of complacent and that we have
our vision of the future may be a bit

narrow minded and maybe that's
normal. I guess it's like, if you go to

someone who's working as a fancy job at
Silicon Valley and you ask him: "What's

your vision of tomorrow? What's your
vision of the future?" And then you ask

the same question to someone else, for
example is an activist for Greenpeace. Then

we have a completely different
perspective, a very different answer of

what the future might be. So sometimes I'm
wondering also, if we are not too obsessed

with the technology and to obsess with
what I would call a techno feats. This

tendency we have to see a problem and to
think, if we throw more technology on top

of it we are going to solve it. Even if
the problem has been created in the first

place by technology. So, that's why we get
extremely excited and I do get excited

about the perspective that when they maybe
will get a baby mammoth that will be

resurrected. And at the same time
we don't take care of the species that are

getting instincts, you know every single
day every 24 hours. There are something

like between 150 and 200 types of plants,
animals, insects that get disappeared and

we'll never see again. Every single day
they disappear around the world. And yet

we still get excited about the idea of
resurrecting the baby mammoth, the

passenger pigeon or dodo, we still create
and breed creature, so that we can exploit

them even better. Should we be looking
forward to a lab grown meat that is

promised. I mean we are told that is going
to be cruelty-free and guilt-free, where it

has in reality they are not totally guilt-
free and cruelty-free. And I don't think so that

they are the best solution to solved the
horrible impact that the meat industry is

having on the environment, on our health
and on the well-being of animals. I mean

there is a solution. It's not the sexy
one. It's not a tricky one. It's to

adapt to plain plant based diet and I
managed to do a bit of vegan propaganda

here. Should we get excited, because there
are few vegan in the room. Should we get

excited, because someone in Japan has made
some tiny drones with, on top of it, it's

horse hair that they're used to pollinate
flowers, because everywhere around the

world the population of bees is collapsing
and that is very bad for our food system.

So should we, should we use geo
engineering to solve our climate trouble.

And at the end with these slides of what
this for me ours, I see you know the

service, which is for me the really the
embodiment of techno feats. So, you

probably know that California has gone
through some very bad period of dry

weather, so rich people wake up and they
see that the grass on their magnificent

lawn is yellow instead of being green. So,
now in California you have services where

you can call someone and they will just,
you know, fix the problem by painting the

grass in green. So there you have it and,
you know, fuck you Anthropocene and global

warming, my lawn is green!

applause

Okay so this how this why I wanted to
bring all these really contrasting visions

together because we might have different
visions of the future but at some point

they will have to dialogue because we have
only one humanity and one planet. And I'm

very very bad that at conclusion. So I
wrote it down. So the artist whose work

made in 2018 a truly exciting year
for me not the artist will showcase the

magic and the wonders of science and
technology. They are the artists who bring

to the table realistic complex and
sometimes also difficult conversation

about the future whether it is the future
of technology, the future of men, or the

future of other forms of life and other
forms of intelligence. They are the

artists who try and establish a dialogue
between the organic, the digital and the

mineral because they're all part of our
world and we cannot go on pretending that

they don't affect each other. Thank you so
much.

Applause

Herald: Thank you Régine for the very
interesting times. Bit confusing talk

about - I'm still thinking about the
dolphin part, but anyway. But by the way

there's this grass painting thing is maybe
it's something that I can apply to

my house. Okay. We have questions at
microphone 2, I guess. So let's start

there.
Question: Hi. I have a question on a

particular part at the beginning you
talked about AI in arts and you mentioned

that there are no AI programs that draw
pictures or run texts but have you heard

about AI developing ideas for say an art
installation?

Régine: Yes as a matter of fact I think
tonight... I mean, if you're going to program

and you may maybe tonight or tomorrow
night there is a talk by Maria and

Nicole. There two artists and I think
that the title might be Disnovation

and I think you might like what
they present. I don't know what they're

going to present but what I know is that
one of their work... I forget the name... if

they're in the room that would be
fantastic. But they had a project where

they have a bot. It's on Twitter and it's
going through some blogs and newspaper

about creativity and also about
technology and using all these data to

generate really crazy stupid title for
installation . And then the artist

challenge other artists to take these
tweets which are really crazy and make an

installation out of it. So that's
a kind of a tricky way of AI being used

for installation I'm sure. Like
right now I cannot think of about

anything else but I mean if you
want you can write me and when my brain

is switched on back, probably
I'll have other ideas.

Herald: OK. Any more questions. I don't
see any.... Ah, there over there.

Microphone 4 please.
Question: Yeah. I was wondering if, well.

there's probably more certain that
we're developing to more suppose human race

because we simply have to do to climate
change. There are also developments right

now that when relatively short term we
would go to Mars and in a sort of sense do

we need to do to fight the human race for
possible multiple planets and with modern

human modification.
Régine: Okay, I didn't understand the

question.
Herald: So, please repeat.

Question: So in general we're going to a
human... both human race that definitely...

we're not able to survive on this planet
for that long anymore. Really optimistic.

I am vegan so yay. And we have
some new developments going on that we'll

be able to go to Mars relatively soon.
Régine: I don't believe it. Who is going

to want to go to that planet like
seriously, like it's going to be like

Australia we are going to send prisoners
and criminals there. Who wants to be like

Like come on. Yeah. Anyway now I
see what you mean. I think I'm kind of

more optimistic about the future
than you are. I think we can still survive

on this planet even if we get very
numerous. We just have to find another

way to consume and take care of each
other. But maybe this my feminine side

talking.
Question: Maybe in general without a lot

of modification to the human
beings it's simply not possible.

Certainly. I think that's a common ground.
And yeah I sort of wish we didn't need a

planet B but I think we do.
Régine: Well I hope I'd be dead when that

comes. That's my philosophy sometimes.
Okay.

Herald: I don't see any more questions so
let's thank the speaker again. Thank you.

Applause

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