Computer science theme links art exhibitions at Derby QUAD

Artificial Intelligence is explored in two exhibitions at Derby QUAD’s galleries.
Deep Meditation by Memo Akten.Deep Meditation by Memo Akten.
Deep Meditation by Memo Akten.

The solo displays by Memo Akten and Mimi Ọnụọha depict the gathering and use of data, machine learning and how humans and machines input and interpret data to view the world in scientific, spiritual and deeply personal ways.

Deep Meditations: A brief history of almost everything in 60 minutes by Memo Akten is a monument that celebrates life, nature, the universe and our subjective experience of it. The work invites us on a spiritual journey through the slow, meditative, continuously evolving images and sounds, told through the imagination of a deep artificial neural network.

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Us, Aggregated 3.0 by Mimi Ọnụọha combines three artworks using Google’s reverse-image search algorithms, to hint at questions of power, community and identity. The works include: The Future Is Here! which examines the process of dataset creation, teasing out the myths and reality of the labour behind machine learning, which is often done in the poorest parts of the world.

Mimi’s creation In Absentia 2.0 is based on an event in the early 1900s, when sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was asked by the US government to conduct research on black rural life in Alabama, research that was never published. Ọnụọha asks “How many find their work halted not by lack of data, but by an unwillingness to hear?”, “What is our responsibility both to listen and advocate for racial justice?”

Her third piece, A People’s Guide to AI, opens up conversation around demystifying Artificial Intelligence. Visitors can download a free digital copy of the book via a QR code in the gallery.

In QUAD Extra Gallery Spaces, Tom K. Kemp’s Napoleon Complex combines a tabletop role-playing game, improvised filmmaking and an animated CGI Emperor Moth to narrate the large and small scale consequences of weather modelling algorithms and global catastrophe insurance.

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All three exhibitions can be viewed until January 24, 2021, and are free to visit. The two galleries are open from 11am to 5pm, apart from Sunday when the gallery opens at midday. QUAD Extra Gallery Spaces opens from 10am to 9pm.

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