He works with artificial intelligence but inspires his work in biology, as shown in his recent mapping Structures of Being, projected on the façade of Casa Batlló. Or as seen in the illustrations of the current season of the Palau de la Música Catalana, in an explosion of artificial invertebrate flora and fauna… and sometimes disturbing. The Argentine Sofía Crespo (1991), from the artistic duo Entangled Others together with her partner, the “former architect” Feileacan McCormick, participated this week in the ISE (Integrated Systems Europe) fair talking about the technical challenges involved in mapping she. “Because obviously this façade is complex, it’s full of textures and the light reflects off the ceramics, the glass… You had to work with those elements in a way that made sense,” she says.
Are you aware of the impact that your work associated with the Gaudí brand and the Barcelona brand can have?
No. I felt it was something personal to put my work in conversation with an incredible artist, assuming that he shared the inspirations that I feel too, that curiosity towards nature. I read about his life and what inspired him. It was important to see him as a human being, someone who had an artistic revelation at some point in his life and changed his style, his way of thinking. I didn’t think so much about the impact, I thought more about doing the work. We had only three months to develop a project of such scale, and I dedicated myself to it. The next day I woke up alone with the idea of ??continuing editing the work until it was perfect.
But you manage your artistic approach to nature with artificial intelligence… How do you see the interaction between art and science?
It is just a tool, not an end in itself. What I always try to mention in my work is that the message does not remain in the algorithm. For me the important thing is to share those sensations that I have, that feeling. One of the challenges that art has is that one cannot force the other to feel the way that one feels.
What line would you not cross when using technology?
Something I would never do is say that artificial intelligence has consciousness. When I started learning about technology, I demystified it, and as an artist, I feel like I have that responsibility. Maybe that’s political in a way, but I would be very sad if technology had recognized rights when invertebrates do not, they are not protected under the law in the same way as, for example, mammals. You can do whatever you want with a jellyfish, it has no spine, it has no brain, but it has a nervous system. That’s one of the things I don’t want to happen. I see it as a human ego trip to think, “ah, look, we created something that has consciousness, but everything that was here does not.” How can it be that consciousness is attributed to an artificial neural network and consciousness is not attributed to an octopus, for example, which has proven to have a lot of intelligence.
The problem is what we call intelligence?
Our definition of intelligence is very limited. Because if I give an IQ test to a plant it will not have intelligence, and if I give it to a computer it will, but it is because we program that way, so it is totally biased. Just because an algorithm can give me words it learned doesn’t mean it has intelligence. That’s why for me the term artificial intelligence is very old-fashioned and misleading.
What should we be talking about instead?
I like “machine learning” because it is more faithful to the algorithmic concept.
Is accelerationism the great challenge today? That political and social idea that information technology and aggressive capitalism should accelerate, intensify.
The idea that we have to continue developing technology so quickly that the technology itself can fix all the previous mistakes we made is quite strong. And that the only solution comes by developing more technology. If that is so, we are left in a loop. For me it is important to mention that art is not that, art is not about being a demo of today’s technology. Many times that is what I am asked: what is the latest technology? And you feel that pressure in being working with the latest. But art is not about that nor should that pressure be put on artists.
He leaves home, from Buenos Aires, at 19 years old, heading to New Zealand. She later lived in Berlin and now resides in Lisbon. The itinerary of an artist who… would have wanted to study biology?
I wish you could study art, computer science and biology at the same time, I would love to, I believe in that intersection of things. I like to see microscopic structures, I have many microscopic ones at home, and I know it is an old technology, but I am surprised to see even something like plastic, which seems uninteresting to see on a microscopic scale.
He has more projects in Barcelona. They are going to present a piece at SónarMies…
Yes, Joan Llort, oceanographer of Supercomputing, contacted us for this project that will be presented in June at the Mies van der Rohe pavilion. And we proposed that he join in a research on marine snow, which is formed by waste of organic matter when it falls to the bottom of the sea (scales, fish food…). It’s about exploring the idea that the oceans are viewed horizontally but not vertically, so we investigate migration from the bottom to the surface.