The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen is doing an exhibition right now about human creativity and AI. I wanted to write my last blog post about visiting the exhibition as the convergence of AI and art is a topic I haven’t really touched on so far in my posts here. Unfortunately, it turns out I won’t be able to visit until after the final deadline so instead I’ve decided to round up a small handful of current museum exhibitions dealing with AI- if you happen to be near any of these museums over the winter holidays make sure to visit!
The Irreplaceable Human: Conditions of Creativity in the Age of AI
The first entry on this list is at Louisiana as previously mentioned. The exhibition investigates the anxieties of the artist working as AI technology progresses and asks whether it will ever be truly possible for AI to overtake humans in making art. The central tenet of the exhibition is the idea of human creativity- the curator posits that this is what separates us from machines. They build the structure of the exhibition around the concept of creativity and how it is manifested and developed, especially in a world where we are made to feel like cogs in a machine.
The exhibition argues that we need to take the long view: to prepare the ground beyond what seems immediately lucrative and to dare to believe that something new and valuable will emerge from it.
Matthias Ussing Seeberg
Smart World
The Techniches Museum Wien seems like the ideal museum for this course. It’s dedicated to highlighting new technologies and reflecting on their relationship to culture and society. Their exhibition Smart World is more education-based than the exhibition at Louisiana. It seeks to give the visitor an overview of the current state of knowledge on AI. It gives viewpoints both from the pro and anti-AI sides of the debate and it doesn’t limit itself to AI and its use in art- it’s more focused on how AI is already embedded in our everyday lives and its applications in fields like education and healthcare. It invites the viewer to decide whether these applications will be good or bad.
AI: Who’s Looking After Me?
This exhibition at the London Science Gallery reflects on the impact AI has already had on our lives through 13 art pieces many of which are interactive. The pieces are varied in the sectors of life they investigate- several are about healthcare, others are about the process and limits of machine learning, and still others are about our relationships with AI and the companies that own them. One of the most interesting pieces of this exhibition to me was “The Future is Here!” by Mimi Onuoha about the massive amount of unseen cheap labor behind AI models and the tagged datasets they work off of.
Act as if you are a curator: An AI Generated Exhibition
Finally, I don’t think this exhibit is still open and it’s by far the furthest away from Leiden but the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University actually let ChatGPT curate an exhibition. The pieces themselves are not about AI, they’re from the museum’s existing collection but the curation team used a series of prompts to make ChatGPT choose which artworks to display and what would be in the wall labels.
It is interesting to see how different museums explore the relationship between art and AI in their expositions. I like that they all have different takes on the topic. I like the one in Louisiana especially, because I think we should talk more about the problems AI can create for artists by building on their work and making something like them but in a lot less time. At the same time it is fascinating to see how AI seems to have gathered some kind of ‘human’ creativity. Unfortunately I am not near any of them, otherwise I would have definitely checked it out!
Wow, thanks for sharing!!! These exhibitions sound super intriguing! I wish I could visit them all and I think I definitely will if I have the chance, but unfortunately I am not near any of them either. 🙁 But still, thanks for writing this, giving me an opportunity to get a bit of the information! The one at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art about the anxieties of artists with AI progressing seems thought-provoking. And “The Future is Here!” about the unseen labor behind AI models is such an important perspective. Again, thanks for your roundup of these exhibitions, which paints a vivid picture of the diverse ways AI is impacting and intertwining with the art world. The intersection of technology and creativity is a dynamic space, and these exhibitions serve as vital forums for dialogue and reflection! 👍
thank you for sharing these exhibitions, im really interested in the advances and implications of AI but would have not thought about looking up exhibitions about these topics myself. for my presentation i chose the topic of the dangers of ai replacing artists so the museum in denmark really catches my eye but the others look very interesting too. very creative concept for a post and if i happen to suddenly go to denmark i will certainly try to visit.