ON VIEW: "Humans Need Not Apply" at Science Gallery Dublin

PRESS RELEASE

Artists take on the automated future with HUMANS NEED NOT APPLY at Science Gallery Dublin

In an automated world, will it be time to put humans out to pasture? Are we hurtling together towards a leisure-time utopia or robot-tended human zoos? HUMANS NEED NOT APPLY, the free spring exhibition at Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, interrogates the supposedly seismic changes that artificial intelligence (AI) is bestowing on society.

Running until the end of May, the exhibition will give visitors the chance to explore the creative possibilities of machine learning—sparking conversations on potential futures that are simultaneously celebratory, beneficial, dystopian and humourous.

The works presented in this exhibition explore the idea of computers creating culture, from algorithm-driven artworks to responsive robots and animatronic desk lamps. Some of the highlights include the following:

• word.camera — An automatic 
photo narrator by artist and hacker 
Ross Goodwin. This camera instantly generates brief poems from the images it captures, dispensing textual rather than visual representations to redefine the photographic experience.
• The Mindfulness Machine — A robot that likes to colour-­in, and an exploration of a future where AI will need to chill out just as much as humans do. The Mindfulness Machine spends its days doodling and making artistic decisions based on its mood and on a complex number of variables, including how many people are watching, ambient noise, weather, tiredness, and its various virtual bio­rhythms.
• ad infinitum — A parasitical entity that lives off human energy. It attaches electrodes onto visitors and harvests their kinetic energy by electrically persuading them to move their muscles. The only way a visitor can be freed is by seducing another visitor to sit down and take their place.
• Tickle Salon — A robotic installation based on the concept of an automated caress. Visitors lie beneath a soft brush that moves around their body, adapting itself by trial and error to map their shape.
• Lady Chatterley’s Tinderbot — An exhibit exploring love in the post-digital age by bringing together humans and non-humans and pre- and post-digital love machines — namely, the literary novel and Tinder. The installation features conversations between Tinder users and an AI that communicates using only dialogue from Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Speaking ahead of the exhibition’s launch, Lynn Scarff, Director at Science Gallery Dublin, said: "As with any new technology that promises to change how we live and work, advances in AI and machine learning provoke extreme responses. HUMANS NEED NOT APPLY sets out to engage our visitors in genuine conversations that probe the multiple opportunities that these technologies present. More critically, the exhibition aims to lend urgency to public discourse about what kind of changes we need to consider to our current infrastructure, from education and health to transport and the economy, to ensure that we all benefit from these opportunities."

HUMANS NEED NOT APPLY opened to the public on Friday, 10th February. The full list of exhibits and the programme of events running alongside the exhibition can be found below and at dublin.sciencegallery.com/hnna.

Where: Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, Pearse Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.
When: 10.02.17 to 21.05.17
Opening hours: Tues-Fri, 12.00-20.00; Sat & Sun, 12.00-18.00
Website: dublin.sciencegallery.com/hnna

​All images courtesy Science Gallery Dublin.