single channel video, HD, color, stereo, 4:52min., 2019
If there is no immortality, reason will sooner of later invent it.
- Anton Chekhov
The work began with a transcription project proposed to the artist who was working as a freelancer through an online platform. The freelancer was given a link to a recording file, which was a stream of unspecified numbers of voices and noises, presumed to be recorded on Google's AI speaker Google Home or other equipment. The employed freelancer listens to thousands of voice data per week and corrects the sentences recognized by AI one by one, contributing to the improvement of the machine's language recognition ability. The video begins with the one question from the recording, assumably from a little girl.
“Google, When will the Earth be destroyed?”
We now begin to ask new questions, greeting our human-talking-entity more deeply in our lives than anyone else. Where does this question come from? Does it seem to be AI has a superpower with all data of the world, will be able to answer any questions that no one ever did? Does AI have a solution to human mortality, which releases us from the endless anxiety of death? On the contrary, are we feeling threatened by them? Are we just bored?
The video collects persistent endeavors and desires of humans toward immortality, speculatively from the perspective of AI. Images, texts, and computer graphic videos that cross myths, religions, sciences, and arts are intermingled with their concrete and abstraction.
︎
Awarded at FOTOMUSEUM, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2019