i wish i never found out
2024
steel, magnet, silk, lace
On show at Kaugummi im Motherboard II at Gr_und curated by Katya Queli with Erratum Gallery
This installation presents a kind of “love dialogue” between artificial intelligence and human sensuality in four acts. On polished steel plates, banal symbols of supposed affection embody an artificial intelligence writing love letters to someone: confessions of love for conquest, romantic surprises, tender messages of affection, and apologies after conflict. A relationship in four acts between human and AI. These precise, pixelated motifs, engraved into cold metal, reflect the calculated affection of AI and stand in sharp contrast to the soft, flowing silk, which represents the warm, sensual, yet also desperate essence of human emotion.
A “love dialogue” emerges between artificial precision, calculation, and probability on the one hand, and human sensuality, loneliness, and the search for genuine affection on the other. The work questions the authenticity of AI and its ability to provide emotional bonds within a technology-driven era and a pure commercial model in which loneliness and the desire for love are exploited. On a symbolic and tactile level, it explores the tension between simulated feelings and the human longing for real connection. The work moves between technological, immaterial, and physical, organic worlds, portraying a purposeless love story.
The work investigates whether humans and AI can form authentic relationships. Fascination with relationships involving human simulations already existed in antiquity. In one of his stories, the ancient Roman poet Ovid tells of the sculptor Pygmalion and how he falls in love with his own artwork—a woman carved from ivory, so perfect and lifelike that she appears almost alive. The escape into a virtual world with an AI has long been a recurring theme in science fiction films and has now, though still in its early stages, become a reality for many. Today, it is large tech companies that sell their users supposed intimacy and real companionship through chatbots. The fact that loneliness can affect anyone, that love is not granted to all, and that grief over the loss of a loved one is turned into a business model. This work seeks to expose these darker sides. The symbols reveal the banality of “love and affection” and underline that a profound union is ultimately impossible.
