Helin (Pedion tou Areos Edition)

We are not founded on ‘I,’ but on ‘we.’

But what is ‘we’?

“Helin” raises the relentless issue of the collective body, of the ‘we’ in our post-human age. Walking the tightrope between material and digital existence, the project converses with the space in which it is placed, historicity, symbolism, and its very materiality.

A marble mass, seeming fluid and solid at once, amorphous and collective, appears in front of us. It is a sculpture created through an artificial intelligence application that was ‘trained’ by fusing freely accessible historic busts from across all eras and cultures and with the aid of online sources such as Scan the World. The according bulk of data was processed through an artificial intelligence machine that employs the adaptive Deep Learning technique – developed by Studio Christian Mio Loclair – for its training in the understanding and mapping of 3D objects.

The version of “Helin” for the exhibition in Ioannina settles for the material imprint of the algorithmic process without disclosing the course of its production. Rather, it is its integration into the natural environment and its allocation next to the bust of Alexandros Pallis, a proponent of Demotic Greek, that poses anew the issue of collective identity in the age of artificial intelligence.

The work is part of the Onassis Collection.