You and AI: Through the Algorithmic Lens

Onassis Stegi’s You and AI is an exhibition that explores artificial intelligence not as some future potentiality but as a present-day reality. From social media platforms using algorithms to select the content we see and hear, not to mention our friends and where we go out, to digital maps that suggest places for us to go and how to get there, to predictive text on our mobile devices that completes our sentences for us, writing along with us, artificial intelligence is now to be found on our very bodies.

The You and AI exhibition – held in Pedion tou Areos Park from June 24 to July 18, 2021 – invites us to enter the heart of the city and explore artworks that question our fantasies when it comes to artificial intelligence. It is an exhibition-in-progress that will constantly be offering up new works, just as artificial intelligence is constantly evolving. In addition to this Pedion tou Areos exhibition in Athens, the festival also includes online experiences, talks, and interactive sessions on artificial intelligence, creativity, and ethics.

The You and AI Festival – presented at Pedion tou Areos Park – consists of 25 works that examine three topics corresponding to three routes through the exhibition: (1) how we view artificial intelligence, and how it views us; (2) artificial intelligence as a key factor shaping public space, political process, and today’s democracy; and (3) artificial intelligence as a constituent part of – and substitute for – the natural environment.

The exhibition is structured in a way that allows visitors to encounter works through a process of curated serendipity: having the works – in the main large-scale HD screens, 3D sculptures, and installations – nestled within the park’s vegetation, and accompanied by soundscapes that activate when spectators / listeners approach specific points, means that the natural and the artificial, the familiar and the unfamiliar, the digital and the physical, the accidental and the intentional all enter into dialogue to create an accurate expression of the experiences that artificial intelligence has brought into our lives.

Artificial intelligence is being welcomed into Pedion tou Areos, a public garden – that is, a space that is natural but also artificial; that takes physical form but constitutes a social construct; and is itself alive – as a community of people and as public space. Artificial intelligence – an eminently technological mode of expression – is our new natural habitat, constantly mediating digital public spaces via social media platforms, as well as physical public spaces via applications that offer navigation, delivery, lodging, and ride-hailing. It feeds off the digital traces left behind as people move through a city, work and chat, even fall in love. Furthermore, Pedion tou Areos (meaning “Field of Ares”) was once an army training ground that became a place for recreation, whereas artificial intelligence – which also sprang from military applications – started out in the social networking sphere and ended up being used as an instrument of power and coercion.

Pedion tou Areos Park constitutes the heart of a new Athens – a multicultural Athens brimming with diverse communities – but also a place where public space is being discovered anew, where young people are being brought together with older citizens, and where the digital encounters the physical, public meets private, and artificial intelligence connects with each of us. From the statue of King Constantine I to the “Gardenia” café, and from the Water Course to Economides Square, AI is entering into discourse with the space, the place, and us all.

With works by the artists:

Memo Akten // Algorithmic Justice League // Hiba Ali // Bill Balaskas & Stop LAPD Spying Coalition // Tega Brain, Julian Oliver, Bengt Sjölén // Catherine D’Ignazio, Lauren F. Klein, Marcia Diaz Agudelo // Stephanie Dinkins // Jake Elwes // Entangled Others (Sofia Crespo & Feileacan McCormick) // Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg // Kyriaki Goni // Evi Kalogiropoulou // Katerina Kana // Egor Kraft // Ilan Manouach // Manolis Manousakis & Afroditi Panagiotakou // Naho Matsuda // Helena Nikonole // Anna Ridler // slow immediate (Gershon Dublon & Xin Liu) // Jenna Sutela // Nye Thompson // Mushon Zer-Aviv, Dan Stavy, Eran Weissenstern

Curator: Irini Mirena Papadimitriou, FutureEverything

Curatorial Direction: Afroditi Panagiotakou

Artistic Direction: Polydoros Karyofyllis (Poka-Yio)

Executive Direction, Scientific Consultant: Prodromos Tsiavos

Executive Producer: Christos Carras

Exhibition Design & Production Management: studioentropia architects_ (Yota Passia, Panagiotis Roupas)

Production Coordination: Heracles Papatheodorou, Katerina Varda

Line Production: Despina Sifniadou, Yorgos Stergiou, Spyridoula Gerazi

Line Production Assistance: Dimitris Skomvoulis

Production Support: Chris Wright

EU Programs Coordination: Dora Vougiouka

EU Programs & Production Support: Vera Petmeza

Research Assistance: Katerina Varda

Visual Advisor: Marina Troupi

Technical Director: Lefteris Karabilas

Deputy Technical Director, Touring Technical Manager: Philip Hills

An Onassis Stegi production

Kindly supported by the Region of Attica

The You and AI Festival is being held as part of the AILab (European ARTificial Intelligence Lab) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union.

Free entry

Read more

https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/festival-you-and-ai-through-the-algorithmic-lens