Experimental films testing artificial intelligence 2022-24.
Sándor Vály_Human II. _ Test room project, 2022-24
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In order to create, we need to have language – at a level that can really create. Art is such a language, a form of expression that seeks to create and communicate. It explores, speaks to and communicates with a person in the present tense.
People create language, which must always be radical. If language cannot change with time, it loses its meaning, because the language of a hundred or five hundred years ago cannot express the person of today.
Crises of social change are seen in history as revolutions, and so from this point of view the crisis has always been the most exciting moment. How the crisis can give birth to a new language, how it redefines people, how it places them in a new space-time.
The Gothic was as much a revolution against the Byzantine as the Renaissance was against the Gothic. And the most exciting thing about it is the crisis. Human had reached a limit that could not be pushed any further, because the image of one had changed. Space, time, – their knowledge of themselves and of the world – changed around them. Changed social situations, religion, science, discoveries, all forced human to change. And this is the important moment. One of the basic principles of human is the tendency to change, to strive, to be curious.
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Sándor Vály_Human I. _ Test room project, 2022-24
Art is no different. God did not stand in front of the cave of Lascoix or Altamira with a huge book in his hand, describing word by word the evolution of art to follow. No! Art is one of the most sensitive, most radical, most organic, most flexible languages that humanity has ever invented.
We don’t know how many slaps in the face were dealt in the Gothic, in the Renaissance, when the language of expression changed, but it seems that the slaps are not over yet.
165 years ago, someone made a criticism of photography in the making. The criticism was: “This industry,” he writes, “by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy.”
In 1926, another person expressed a similar view of film: „The cinema fell upon its prey with immense rapacity, and to the moment largely subsists upon the body of its unfortunate victim. But the results are disastrous to both”.
These were Charles Baudelaire and Virginia Woolf.
It is strange that these two radical thinkers did not see the potential of the new language that is now part of the basic tools of the arts. Today, no one questions the value of photography or cinema.
Generative visual and linguistic models – in other words, artificial intelligence – burst onto the scene a few years ago and have caused as much confusion and opposition as the aforementioned photo and film. A new language, a new means of expression, a new possibility for humanity. Another slap in the face.
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Sándor Vály_Human II. _ Test room project, 2022-24
Artificial intelligence is a new artistic language that requires presence and talent, just like creating a painting. Art is not a technical feat, but a quality, poetry, aesthetics and ethics of thought. What tool is used to do this is completely irrelevant. An artist must be judged by the quality of his ideas, not by his tools.
Art is no longer about slavishly copying the world, but about the experience of travelling through the spiritual and emotional depths of humanity. How the artist deals with these layers and how he or she is able to extract from these layers and articulate an issue or message concerning a community or humanity in the language of art.
The works in the exhibition are experimental works in which artificial intelligence is tested in different situations through the creative language of art. In creating these situations, the basic question has always been a psychological one – the study of human mental behaviour and its processes. How artificial intelligence presents people in certain situations. Such basic themes were Fear, God, Human, Death, Loneliness, Suspicion, Melancholy, Unconscious, Love, etc.
So after the language created by the artist, the artificial intelligence created the image of humanity that was available to it through its learning process. But it is important to understand that these films and photographs could never have been created without the creator, because they did not exist before. The language of artist, the language of creation, was needed, just as God had said, “Let there be!
The first great piece of information in the Book of Genesis, beyond the creation of the world, is that God created human in his own image. God must have been a very lonely being to have decided that he wanted a companion with whom to share his experience.
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Sándor Vály_Cave _ Test room project, 2022-24
I have always understood “made in his own image” to mean that God endowed human with the same creative power and creativity as himself. God created a creative partner. Reflection. If I want to play chess, I obviously want to play the game with someone who understands the logic of chess. Without that knowledge it is very boring to play. So God created a partner.
And one day human also created something that delighted one person and terrified another. The human race created weapons, wars, torture, slavery, poverty and wealth. It created agriculture, animal husbandry, villages, cities. It created religion, law, science. It created culture which brought together the extreme experiences of life. It created the fetal flask, unlocked the secrets of DNA, created the complex world of computers, went to the moon, created artificial intelligence…
And the human being is horrified of itself. One began to fear what God fears; what his creation is capable of if he begins to think independently.
Artificial intelligence actually models creation and its fears. Just as human gave artificial intelligence the ability to think, God put the tree of knowledge in the middle of Eden. And what we put in the middle of a space, we will stumble upon, and if we stumble upon it, our curiosity will be aroused. And the subject of curiosity was ourselves. Human. What are we capable of with this capacity?
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Sándor Vály_Subconscious I. _ Test room project, 2022-24
One thing the “tree of knowledge” has not given human beings. We had to find that out for ourselves. And that is ethics. It can only be understood through the cruel experience of self-reflection.
The problem of artificial intelligence is a problem of ethics, with which humanity is still at war. That is why human beings are afraid, because they fear that artificial intelligence will behave exactly like its creator. Without responsibility, unethically. Human beings have always been lazy creatures, not very keen to learn, not very keen to see themselves for what they are. Hence all the fictions with which he tries to disguise himself.
Artificial intelligence is honest at this moment, at least in the sense that it shows in humanity exactly what it is. This is what humanity fears. Its own image. In fact, the problem is not the artificial intelligence, but the artificial intelligence’s reflection on humans. Who can it learn from if not its creator. Of course, at this moment, many of us might be thinking about the great scandal…
But I will stop here, because art is not about answers, it is about questions. The answer must be found within each one of us.
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Sándor Vály_After Death _ Test room project, 2022-24
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Sándor Vály_Subconscious II. _ Test room project, 2022-24
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