We are all contributors to the way technology works or manifests itself. The fact that we do not fully understand the inner workings of technology systems (the black-box) does not prevent us from trusting the decisions that technology mediates or even makes for us. But should we limit this trust? Should we also accept the errors? To what extent does this collective agency of technology represent us at an individual level? Does the way we position ourselves in this communality have the capacity to determine future situations or technological developments? In other words, can technology be a pretext for speculation about the future, or is it rather an evolutionary process involving variation and selection similar to the natural world?
The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic is an artistic and research-oriented project, at the intersection between art and science. It will unfold in a collective and participatory art installation, actively involving the public in the creative process. The artists – Floriama Candea, Sabina Suru & Andrei Tudose, and Cătălin Creţu try to decipher, along with the public, new ways of relating to technology, while positioning themselves in this connection. The aim of the project is to raise awareness on the responsibility we have in the human-technology relationship, by researching the ability of technologies to be an invisible guide to our behaviors, habits, and physical & emotional states, thus blurring the boundaries between the natural and the artificial world.
The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic project uses several types of technologies, more or less intrusive: machine learning algorithms, generative manipulation of image and sound, computer vision, sensors for recording physiological data (e.g. , EEG, EKG, chemo-sensors) – technologies that have become commonplace, which we no longer pay attention to, but which have the ability to record data (whether images or parameters of our physical or emotional state) and make it visible in unexpected ways. The interaction with the artifacts of the collective installation proposes to guide the public in rethinking the relationship between the individual human agency and that of convivial technologies. The project provides clues about the place and responsibility people have in relation to technology, translating it into a chain of events that generate visual artistic content
The Somatist, the Entropist & the Skeptic offers an innovative approach to artistic collaborative practices by opening them up to the public. By doing so, it undermines the authorial dimension of the creative gesture both through the explored concepts and by means of direct participation of the public in the actual creation of the installation’s components.