Human-Alike
with: Petra Cortright, Sarah Friend, IOCOSE, Kalen Iwamoto, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Bogosi Sekhukhuni
As humankind increasingly relies upon technology to conduct daily affairs, sophisticated machines inexorably absorb human-like capabilities to better simulate and predict our behaviours and sensibilities.
At the heart of human/machine interdependence lie extractive, profit-driven logics and addictive stratagems that ingest information and knowledge from one to feed the other, seeking to improve their human-like potential.
‘Human-alike’ challenges the mechanics of technological innovation, questioning the sociological impacts of hypercommunication and digital saturation on personal identities. It examines how the psychology of clicking, scrolling, and posting has instilled inflated stereotypes and manufactured desires in our collective imagination, flattening individual diversities toward a massification of polarised voices with no clear sense of direction. As the engineering of sophisticated machines harnesses human attention, increasingly mimicking and embodying our behaviours, people become progressively subjugated to realities dictated by the screen environment. These simulacra reside in the users’ subconscious, developing disproportionate models of mimetic desires that seek to confuse and marketise previously uncommodified areas of human life.
Showcasing pioneering works by six international artists, ‘Human-alike’ exposes the politics, ethics, and absurdities in our relationship with technology, unveiling a loop of contradictions in the rhetoric of equitable coexistence. At the same time, it opens a critical window into possible technological futures, suggesting alternative ways of living, working, and relating to technology.
Credits
Curated by: Linda Rocco
