Artists discuss the effects of technology

Artificial intelligence may be a cause for concern in many industries, but a panel of artists from Miu Miu's Tales & Tellers program at Art Basel Paris approached the technological advancements with restrained enthusiasm.

This year's inaugural event, held on October 16 and 17, brought together directors, talents and artists who have participated in Miu Miu's Women's Tales and/or collaborated with the fashion brand. The third panel in the series highlighted discussions between dancer-choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall, choreographer Geumhyung Jeong, filmmakers Lila Avilés and Hailey Gates, contemporary artist Shuang Li, and moderator Cécile B. Evans.

When asked how technology affects the creative process, visual and performance artist Evans discussed the intersection between art and technology. “I think a lot of our work gets confused with technology when it’s just a condition of the times we exist in,” she said. “A fork is a technology because we no longer wanted to eat with our hands. A pencil is a technology because we didn't want to write with our blood. My phone is a technology because we encounter so many images, people and instances that we could never keep in mind. In this regard, it is a great privilege.

However, Evans said technology is also something that needs to be questioned and sometimes criticized: “The phone is not just an extension of my body. This was something made by a company that also has intentions that go against what my body wants.

Rowlson-Hall shared that her next film project will feature AI as well as classic cinematic techniques. “I'm going to use painted glass plates as the background that you film against, which is one of the oldest techniques used before CG imaging,” she said. “It's just about implementing what's best for your vision and your artistry and making the most of what that represents, but also honoring what people have creatively come up with as solutions in the past.”

Choreographer and performance artist Jeong, who uses animatronic figures in her work, discussed the surprising effects of a recent project gone wrong. “There are a lot of failures throughout the process,” she said. “I'm not trying to fail, but when a machine does something unsuccessfully, it becomes more human and you create emotion in the spectators. In a way, it's more successful if I want create a character.”

In general, the panel approached the future with a mix of optimism and, as Evans put it, “compassionate pessimism.”

“It's basically about recognizing that the systems and structures that we live in are mostly broken and failing and that the world is very difficult, but people still have to wake up every day and live in it,” he said. Evans said. “There's this beautiful line of dialogue in Samuel Beckett's Endgame that says, 'You're on earth, there's no cure for that.' And I want to propose that something like hope or the like, even if there is no cure, is a necessary form of compassion for everyone who gets up and lives there.

Aviles suggested that these complex circumstances present an opportunity to expand one's artistic vision through curiosity. “Those moments that can be scary are also seeds for asking more questions,” she said. “And really try to engage with your art.”

Similarly, Rowlson-Hall emphasized the need for a modicum of hope in her work. “If I’m not instilling some sense of hope in my work, then I don’t think I’m creating a future that I want to live in,” she said. “Personally, I think it’s my duty as a filmmaker and creator to create the world I want to live in, and that doesn’t mean creating something fake around it.”

Meanwhile, Gates discusses the relationship between humor and tragedy in his work. “I had the chance to direct one of Women's Tales, and I just want to thank Miu Miu for letting me do the film because I came to them and said, 'I want to do a comedy on the military-industrial complex, which they very generously let me do,” she said. “But, to me, the importance of comedy in this truly, profoundly horrible world that we live in. is paramount because it is truly how we understand these horrors. So, as difficult as it is, I think I definitely tend to laugh. I think that's the only way to metabolize it.

Building on Gates's evocation of the humorous side of technology, installation artist Li, whose work focuses on the gap between the digital lives we are expected to live and the fragile infrastructure that supports this technology, shared his love/hate relationship with generative artists. artificial intelligence chatbots. “When I write emails, I'm so curt that I just answer yes or no. And then, if I do [an AI chatbot with advanced natural language processing]they make me look like a person,” she said. “That’s when I got so scared. I literally felt like I looked more like a robot.