While much of the current debate around AI seems to be either promoting a sort of Silicon Valley utopian enthusiasm or a panicky dystopianism about the various technological challenges and possibilities of digital, arebyte Gallery, and curator Helen Starr, have charted a different course and created an immersive exploration of AI in the arts.
What Is It Like? takes its cues from a seminal 1974 philosophical essay written by Thomas Nagel titled, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? In that essay, Nagel explores the nature of consciousness, arguing that it is entirely subjective, and emphasising that to understand the experience of another being — like a bat — demands more than just knowledge of its physicality or behaviours. According to Nagel, as bats have a radically different sensory perception, relying heavily on echolocation, humans would have difficulty perceiving the world as bats do. Starr brings this argument, combined with her own view of the brain as a machine that constructs tailored realities, into the dialogue between humans and AI with a collection of digital works by international artists who explore the interfaces of art and technology.
The show is compact and offers a creative and experimental approach to these media works. Soundscapes, VR, Game engines and other AI technologies invite the viewer to grapple with complex ideas in playful and immersive ways. Works by the artists are accessed through screens attached to latticed sliding panels. Static statements and quotes hinting at content give way to the works themselves when the viewer physically moves the screens. Sliding the panels to precise points triggers the works into life. While this show is about technology, it is also very much about embodiment and is accessed through haptics-touch, motion, sound, all of which play a part in the experience.
This is not a large exhibition, but the works made available to explore are diverse in their interactions with technology. One of the earliest pieces on display is ‘Oh no, please don’t’ (2016) by Katarzyna Krakowiak, a sound sculpture which revisits one of the earliest computer-generated poems by Alison Knowles. Other works by Damara Inglês, Lawrence Lek, Anna Bunting-Branch and Choy Ka Tai, explore a wide expanse of issues connected with technology-embodiment, time, dementia, and the distinctions between semantic and episodic memory using diverse technologies such game engines, early VR, AI-generated worlds and much more.
At the heart of this exhibit is an exploration of the boundaries of consciousness and What Is It Like? offers some strong statements about the human and the technological, arguing that current models of AI are incapable of sentience, emotion, or self-awareness, and shedding light on why current debates about AI are lacking.
What Is It Like?
27 February – 4 May 2025
arebyte Gallery
Java House, 7 Botanic Square,
London City Island, E14 0LG
Barry Taylor writes and speaks about the intersections of philosophy, theology and contemporary culture. In past, he was the road manager for AC/DC during the Bon Scott era before becoming a Los Angeles theologian.
