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2nd Liminal Space at the ]a[ Research Day

On 12.11.2020 DAD’s Niko Wahl presented our intermediate results on the third research day of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Due to COVID-19, this event was an online ZOOM meeting. The goal of the ]a[ research days is to give an overview of all ongoing research projects at the academy including discussions with all participating colleagues.

Niko Wahl gave a short introduction of our project and an overview of DAD’ s collaborations with three different museums, where we work with an archive of an ethnological journal, a fine arts gallery and the statues in the Academy’s Glyptothek.

Since our work with the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art and with the Belvedere, Vienna, has already been documented in previous blogposts [1][2], lets turn to the presentation of plaster casts at the Academy‘s Glyptothek, which we explored with Dusty, an off-the-shelf household robot.

Many people associate Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the development of ever more powerful and dextrous robots, along with horror scenarios of these machines taking over the planet. In reality robots are a small part of AI which is rather dominated by machine learning software solutions powering your Internet search engine, the natural language interface to your mobile phone, online music, movie and product recommendations and many other everyday technologies.

On the other hand, many people already own robots with limited forms of AI, for instance vacuum cleaning robots. What if we confront such a household robot with a – supposedly obsolete – museum collection of historic plaster copies of famous statues, whose very physis seems to be made of dust.

The robot takes its own route through the museum space. Following its built-in algorithms it perpetually finds new ways through the collection. It seemingly decides for itself in what order to visit the museum objects, all the time metaphorically internalizing the objects of art while inhaling their dust.

Other visitors are free to follow the robot on its path through the museum space engaging with its exhibition narrative. They might benefit form surprising relationships between objects of art established by the often creative course of the robot. Smart last generation vacuum cleaning robots are able to share their sensory experiences with others of their kind. These shared experiences usually are measurements of objects and how to avoid them when traversing a room. But what if this cloud communication, usually not accessible to us, deals with objects of art instead of everyday items? Will meeting David or the Pieta change the robots’ discourse? What if the robot meets a portrait of itself?

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DAD at the ]a[ Research Day #3

Photo by Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

On 12.11.2020 we will give an overview of DUST AND DATA at the third research day of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. This event will be online, attendance is free but you should register before the 4th of November. Our talk will include news about Dusty!