Extending Humanity. The Work of Art in the Age of Spiritual Machines
Back in 1999, the anticipation for the new millennium and the future of technological advancement was palpable. During that year, Ray Kurzweil published his influential book The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, creating a daring concept of spiritual machines. According to Kurzweil, with advanced artificial intelligence, machines could attain a level of consciousness or self-awareness matching human spirituality. That would set a future course for humanity by extending the definition of both human and intelligence, embracing new entities of endless potential. Twenty-five years later, the concept seems more than relevant. With changing notions of social interactions and spectatorship, the global connection is stronger than ever, allowing one to participate virtually in real-time events and witness both the accomplishments and atrocities of humanity within the reach of the phone.
With Kurzweil's work in mind, the Spiritual Machines exhibition delves into the complexities of our relationships with technology-mediated spiritual and cultural practices, with artworks and speculative projects that complicate the emerging impact of AI and technological "progress." The curators of the show, Amelia Marzec and Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, ask the fundamental question: how to retain our humanity through technological advancement, artificial intelligence, hybrid humans, and the virtual world? To answer that, the curators combined a multiverse of interdisciplinary works by leading contemporary artists responding to the technological advancement of our current time, displaying both material and non-material pieces, videos, sculptures, installations, and performances, among others.
Breaking the mold
During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity's entire mode of existence. This opening sentence to the third act of Walter Benjamin's seminal essay resonates with the key concept of the exhibition, which addresses the relationship between present, past, and future, the ancestors and descendants. The mode of human perception is constantly changing, multiplying, and diversifying, enhanced by virtual reality, immersive new media, and global connection. What Benjamin called a loss of the aura became a way to democratize art that could be created and enjoyed on a much more equal basis. Spiritual Machines is delving into the cultural shifts that pushed humanity forward and beyond the existing mold, seeking reparative ways and cultural practices that merge spirituality and technology. The exhibition provides a multiplicity of spaces that are no longer bound to material property but rather a hybrid environment where both virtual and real can align, providing more accessible and inclusive sites of socio-cultural exchanges. The repeating themes of religious symbolism are bound with the speculative counter-narrations, healing the trauma of religious conservatism and Manichean optics. By radically expanding the notions of sacred, going beyond the Christian dogma, Spiritual Machines challenges the Western worldview in an uncertain time, turning to praxises of Indigenous beliefs and new religions, providing a glimpse of hope into the future.
Retaining, revisiting, and evolving
Spanning centuries of art-making and craftsmanship, Spiritual Machines draws from diverse cultural traditions and enhances them through modern technological advancements, allowing speculative and alternate scenarios to empower people and communities. The notions of retaining and revisiting visible throughout the exhibition provide a creative and meaningful framework, respecting the age-old traditions and building new narratives upon them. Linda Sok's Deities in Temples III and VII (2023-24) reflect on generational knowledge merged with technological advancements, making the connection more accessible. The artist is reimagining lost, stolen, and destroyed silk Pidan weavings targeted during the Cambodian Khmer Rouge Regime, collaborating with her family through digital exchanges and creating the works together. Chun Hua Catherine Dong in Mulan (2022) is presenting a video-based VR work reimagining the story of Mulan, a legendary Chinese folk heroine, in an aquatic fantasy world where the protagonist becomes a hybrid being and a part of the ecosystem. Drawing from Afro-Caribbean heritage, Sherese Francis created an assemblage altarpiece that works as a traveling device, ALTeks (2023), connecting time and language, past and present, through the sound system. Sylvia Ke's Cosmic Computing Unit is inspired by the fortune-telling and divination text of Yi-Ching, which is based on binary arithmetics. With technological advancements, new methods have emerged for researching cultures and traditions affected by war or colonialism. For Khazar Archeological Confabulations (2023), Nimrod Astarhan formed a home-brewed AI system for a speculative archeological database of Khazar's culture, creating sustainable, toxic-free cyanotypes. Merging traditions and new evolvements, Lee Tusman's Borscht Belt System (2024) consists of custom software providing a digital ecosystem for traditional Orthodox shtetl inhabitants and modern assimilated characters. Tusman's simulation is a self-playing and self-doubting AI, repeatedly prompting itself with psychological questions with no answers, providing a symbolic and insightful take on an existential crisis. Tradition and technology also meet in Glenn Potter-Takata's video and live performance TV Buddha except on the internet (2024), reflecting on Buddhist imagery through mass media and consumer-driven society, referencing Nam June Paik's famous sculpture. Two works from Gabe Duggan, beach hairs Peter (2022) and honeystillfloats (2019), present new approaches to weaving, creating digital jacquards depicting the inverted crucifixion of Peter and unpredicted glitches of machines breaking down. [M] Dudeck, on the other hand, in their Liturgy 1.11 (The Growing of a God) (2024), invents a fictional, queer sci-fi religion. This animated single-channel video installation features an original soundscore and an invocation performed in a queer alien language invented by the artist. Avital Meshi's AI Séance (2024) presents an interactive performance summoning spirits, merging technology, AI wearable devices, and mysticism, delving into the exploration of human beliefs. In Her Interior's video Tell me what you see outside (stalactite crown mix) (2024) shows a conversation in and on a speculative world, unsettling the boundaries between real/virtual, human/more-than-human, ecological/technological, nature/society, global/local. For Ursula Endlicher's performance, The HTMLgardeness—Sowing HTML but Harvesting AI (2024), the artist invites visitors for a series of walks, focusing on climate and codes hidden in nature while offering an AI-generated harvest.
Carceral Archipelago
The show presents a complex and multilayered approach to the notion of spiritual machines, delving into the political usage of technology and giving the Foucauldian concept of carceral culture a new meaning. Reflecting on rules and regulations present in medicine or bureaucracy, Spiritual Machines expands on what Foucault described as the formation of knowledge in modern society, providing a complex cultural analysis of existence within conditions governed by politicized technology. This relation is examined by Mama Spa Botanica workshop in their Olympic Doula Nicky Dawkins (Double Consciousness Infinity Mirror) (2020-21), in which the artist depicts an infinite image of 9-months pregnant Doula Nicky Dawkins, a reproductive rights advocate. The referenced concept of W.E.B. Du Bois's double consciousness takes on surveillance, medical violence, and the lack of state protection towards Q+ BIPOC lives. For Periode Des Attitudes Passionelles: I ii, v1 (2021), Sophie Kahn looks into the oppressive history of medicalized female hysteria in Salpêtrière Hospital in nineteenth-century Paris, creating 3D printed sculptures of fractured bodies reenacting poses from heavily photographed female patients of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot. Another work on surveillance present in the show is Dennis Delgado's the Dark Database (2020-), which researches bias inherent in facial recognition systems. Using Open Computer Vision, the database provides a record of visibility and representation seen through the eyes of artificial intelligence, giving a nod to studies like Joy Buolamwini's Algorithmic Justice League. Merging Mayan mythology with the history of U.S. immigration policy, Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga's esfuerzo (2024) gameplay and workshop provide an accessible dual-language index of ideas for a sustainable and effective immigration policy. Carlos David Trujillo's Social Mediums (2022) encapsulates archival footage of corporate training and AI-produced voiceovers of a fictional company, FOREVERPOST ®, selling "afterdeath" social media packages, keeping the lost memories alive.
Lift the skin, dissect: here begins the machine
One of the main figurative notions in the exhibition is a cyborg, which provides a vision of excelling the human body and saving us from the cis-het societal norms. In her seminal essay, A Cyborg Manifesto (1985), Donna Haraway defines a cyborg as a hybrid between machine and organism, a creature of social reality and fiction, needy for connection. Spiritual Machines fosters conversations about dynamically changing relationships with our own bodies, expanding on the technological enhancements as well as the limitations. Adelle Lin Yingxi, in Powered by the Glitch (2024), references Legacy Russell's concept of the glitch, merging art, technology, performance, and feminist cyborg theory, creating an AR cyborg suit that forms new identities in the participation of the viewers. A conversation-based piece from Andres Senra, Queering Utopia- No Governor's Island (2023), features concepts of cyborg theory, reflecting on the global environmental crisis and critiquing the exploitation of cishet patriarchy and colonialism, facilitating a new queer future at Governors Island. malu laet's performance and interactive sonic sculptures Sally's Rite of Integration (2023) introduces Sally, a tech wizard, haptic avatar, and mediator, combining cyber-alchemical interfaces, abstract technology, and experiential magic. A critical approach toward technology-driven societies provides MIDHEAVEN OR NAH's Venus Rx (2022-) performance that requires a connection happening within 1-on-1 encounters with participants, challenging the absence of human feeling promoted by techno-capitalism. Reflecting on human connection, LadyK's Transmissions From The System (2016) and Memory Capsules (2019) micro-controllers protect personal memories from vanishing. TwinArt's futurist vision in TwinArt in the Museum (2024) introduces Elka + Lyka fem-bots, creating scenarios and idealized narratives while revealing imperfections in the virtual twin world.
Law Of Accelerating Returns
One of the more intriguing responses to Kurzweil's book was an essay (1999) from the visual artist G.H. Hovagimyan, in which the author envisions a future of clones, replicas of 20-year-olds kept in a coma for the next 20 years so that 40-year-olds can switch bodies and stay young forever. He asks two crucial questions: What type of art can be created for the type of being that never experienced death? How can one talk about generational differences when there are no more generations? This vision of the future, on the one hand, reflects a fear of losing continuity and identity, ancestral knowledge, and memories; on the other hand, it promises infinite possibilities that exceed mortality and accelerate humanity to a whole different level. It resonates with what Kurzweil called a law of accelerating returns, emphasizing the exponential growth of information technology, as opposed to linear, allowing for a feedback loop that enables further advancements. The Spiritual Machines exhibition jumps onto this trajectory of growth, providing a complex examination of our current time, extending the notions of humanity through the technology merged with spiritual practices. The curators of the show, Marzec and Lyn-Kee-Chow do not repeat the reductive dichotomy of machines serving or threatening humanity. Rather, they examine the ongoing changes in our relations with cultural practices, rituals, and artifacts through the available technological enhancements, creating a very much-needed analysis of the current world condition.
Julia Stachura (she/her) is an art historian and independent curator, currently preparing her dissertation at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. Her research interests include the history of photography, the tangibility of memory, and new media. Her curatorial practice focuses on invisible power structures and socially engaged art. She is a recipient of the 2023-2024 Fulbright scholarship. She conducted research on numerous international universities, including John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freien Universität Berlin, and Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, among others.
Footnotes:
1. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, New York: Viking Press, 1999.
2. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, In: Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, from the 1935 essay New York: Schocken Books, 1969, p. 5.
3. Paraphrased quote from Paul Valery, Cahier B, 1910.
4. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto. Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, University of Minnesota Press, 2016, p. 7.
5. G.H. Hovagimyan, Art in the Age of Spiritual Machines (With Apologies to Ray Kurzweil), Leonardo, 2001, Vol. 34, No. 5, Ninth New York Digital Salon (2001), pp. 455.
6. Kurzweil, The Age of…