By Daniela Silvestrin, curator and researcher.
It seems so tempting and advantageous to increasingly refine and advance new technologies (both digital and biological), to integrate them into our lives and bodies, in order to support, expand and augment our senses and abilities; so tempting, time- and energy-saving to more and more rely and count on the powers and increasing ‘intelligence’ of the technological systems that develop with enormous speed.
It all happens so fast though that there is hardly time to reflect these developments, implications and potentially unwanted effects, but just to react to them once they manifest themselves. The 7 Configurations cycle, therefore addresses questions about the fragile balance between being in control and being controlled by the gods that we worship and want to acquire power from: the balance between incorporating and manipulating our bodies through technology, between what is natural and what is not, between applying technologies and being conditioned by them, between anthropomorphizing them and being revolted by uncanny valley effects.
A piece such as Alia: Zǔ tài, for instance, shows how new technologies and devices can appear innocuous and fearsome at the same time, while leaving us with the question: Will we have to cut the cord at some point? If so, how do we know when — and will we be able to?
As we cannot slow down the speed of progress, or undo knowledge that was already produced and distributed, we can only work on reflecting and thinking about the implications we will or might have to confront. More specifically today, the challenge for artists like Marco Donnarumma therefore lies in developing ways in which the possibilities and implications of scientific research and the rapid development of new technologies can be addressed, used, appropriated, and critically engaged with from an artistic and design perspective.
The challenge is to use the potential of speculative and disruptive creative practices for the production of new forms of experiential knowledge in exchange with other disciplines, in order to approach questions that are not being answered by the disciplines within which these technologies are being developed:
When is a machine “intelligent”, and what does this mean for the relation and approach we create towards it? What happens if we should not be able to control or abstain from the co-existence with it any more? How close do we want this relation to become? What questions do we have to consider, what decisions do we have to take?
Excerpts from a talk for Technosphaerenklaenge #6 at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, November 2018.