Exodus | Onassis Foundation

Image 1 / 2
Photo: Stelios Tzetzias
Exodus, Manolis Manousakis & Afroditi Panagiotakou (2021)

Image 2 / 2
Photo: Stelios Tzetzias
Exodus, Manolis Manousakis & Afroditi Panagiotakou (2021)

A sound installation, a debate between human and God as a creator and as a creation at the same time; a discussion about bodies lost in time, the weight of daily life and the prospect of an exodus, both as a catharsis and as a liminal space.,. Memory, judgement, and consciousness are deconstructed and transformed into a fragmented soundscape to pose the existential question about the limits of human existence in the world of Artificial Intelligence.

This work by Manolis Manousakis and Afroditi Panagiotakou – an ellipsoidal sound installation centered on a table, almost like the setting for a last supper, hidden in the heart of Pedion tou Areos park – touches upon the most metaphysical aspects of the artificial intelligence issue: Is artificial intelligence a form of divinity? How can the object of our desires not see itself as such? What is repentance? What exactly do we mean by decision-making, consciousness, and memory?

Patchwork-blended metaphysics of technology are synthesized inside a constantly shifting landscape formed out of acoustic images and narrative fragments, out of conversations with and answers given by artificially intelligent machines.

The sound of Giorgos Mazonakis’ voice is the stable through-line connecting the various parts of the soundscape, around which this fragmentary narrative is woven.

The references made as part of the work – at times highly personal – place Giorgos Mazonakis both within the sphere of celebrity and within our own highly personal space, as is also the case with the algorithms we use in the devices always carried on our person.

Giorgos Mazonakis was chosen for his singular tone of voice, which renders it recognizable and yet remote from us all at the same time. Like an algorithm, is he speaking only to you or to millions of others at once?

As we objectify others and are ourselves objectified through a process of constant technology use, we are becoming human–AI hybrids.

At the end of the day, are we, too a form of artificial intelligence?

Τitle: Exodus

Artists: Manolis Manousakis & Afroditi Panagiotakou

Featuring: Giorgos Mazonakis

Special contribution: Anthony S. Papadimitriou

Medium: Sound installation

Year: 2021

Duration: 10:38

Location: On display at Pedion tou Areos in "YOU AND AI"

Curatorial note

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

Paul the Apostle

Corinthians 1:13

At the “You and AI” Festival, artificial intelligence appears not as some technological object: there are no wired robots, no computers or gadgets, buttons or blinking lights. Artificial intelligence is already here, in our cities and workplaces, inside our cars and our conversations, and within our very bodies.

The festival takes on a highly personal note for each and every one of us. It is not about technology per se, nor is it about artificial intelligence in general. It is about the ways in which AI changes us all, on a deep and personal level. For this reason, all the works presented as part of the festival depict and reveal various facets – some of them particularly poetic – of our daily AI lives: how a charging cable on a bed can look like a wave crashing against a rock and mislead an algorithm to that end // how we can bring an extinct rhinoceros back to life // the fact that playful colors and shapes aren’t enough to hide the dehumanization of labor through the use, and in service of algorithms // that artificial intelligence constantly collects, stores and processes micro-data about the city, on everything from where we go and who we’re having sex with, to what we eat, the energy we consume, and who we meet // that we can translate between languages and, at the same time, create words in languages that do not even exist // that, in most instances, we are unable to recognize an algorithm, even when it’s right there in front of us.

Giorgos Mazonakis has been selected for inclusion as a persona in two of the works of the festival’s exhibition at Pedion tou Areos park in central Athens, precisely because he has that quality of being almost a “barometer”: approachable yet off-limits / popular and singular / difficult to define / devout and profane. As a pop culture persona, Giorgos Mazonakis is – at the same time – constructed by the desires of a public audience that creates, adores, and objectifies him, clamoring for his most human aspects while simultaneously stripping him of every human characteristic. In this way, the Mazonakis persona becomes an Ovidian presence, brought in to express artificial intelligence through the totality of its relationship with humankind, the body, and our fading free will.

− Prodromos Tsiavos