1 00:00:00,001 --> 00:00:03,210 [crackling noise] 2 00:00:03,255 --> 00:00:09,115 ARTIST: The point of departure for my exhibition "Errorism" are systemic errors. 3 00:00:09,208 --> 00:00:10,352 [crackling noise] 4 00:00:10,383 --> 00:00:14,846 Errors in thinking, errors in collective intelligence 5 00:00:14,898 --> 00:00:17,040 errors in decision making. 6 00:00:17,118 --> 00:00:24,599 And the approach of the neoliberal order towards these errors and their prediction. 7 00:00:24,646 --> 00:00:25,282 [crackling noise] 8 00:00:25,307 --> 00:00:28,435 I'm at the same time interested in errors 9 00:00:28,460 --> 00:00:33,181 as something creative. As beginning of a new form. 10 00:00:33,220 --> 00:00:35,516 Without errors... 11 00:00:35,564 --> 00:00:39,431 without errors and replication of genes, there would be not evolution. 12 00:00:39,470 --> 00:00:41,579 There would be no change. 13 00:00:41,607 --> 00:00:45,650 [quiet mesmerizing music] 14 00:00:45,675 --> 00:00:48,638 We tend to say "errare humanum est". 15 00:00:48,697 --> 00:00:51,001 Erroring is human. 16 00:00:51,036 --> 00:00:53,458 What does it mean to eliminate errors 17 00:00:53,497 --> 00:00:55,236 with the use of algorithms? 18 00:00:55,261 --> 00:00:57,404 Are we still going to be human? 19 00:00:57,443 --> 00:00:59,724 Are we still going to be able to 20 00:00:59,763 --> 00:01:04,177 produce the same creative outputs as we do today? 21 00:01:04,202 --> 00:01:05,349 We don't know that. 22 00:01:05,374 --> 00:01:11,873 [subtly rumbling noises] 23 00:01:11,898 --> 00:01:15,974 CURATOR: Errorism is a solo show of Agnieszka Kurant 24 00:01:16,025 --> 00:01:20,888 but in the same time this exibition constantly questions and undermines 25 00:01:20,913 --> 00:01:25,216 the very idea of what it means to um... 26 00:01:25,255 --> 00:01:28,185 speak about individual autorship? 27 00:01:28,243 --> 00:01:31,458 And what does "the individual" mean 28 00:01:31,517 --> 00:01:34,779 in the context of the collective society? 29 00:01:34,818 --> 00:01:38,031 [quiet mesmerizing music] 30 00:01:38,070 --> 00:01:41,978 ARTIST: The work "Errorism" is an installation 31 00:01:42,036 --> 00:01:44,419 of which I am not the author. 32 00:01:45,220 --> 00:01:53,513 The authorship of this piece could be attributed both to artificial intelligence algorithms, 33 00:01:53,867 --> 00:02:02,559 and to the entire population of people contributing to the corpus of the english language. 34 00:02:02,657 --> 00:02:10,040 The way that this piece was created was the plugment of the artificial intelligence algorithms 35 00:02:10,188 --> 00:02:17,396 that analysed very large amounts of texts of a given author. 36 00:02:17,680 --> 00:02:22,314 And on the basis of this analysis and pattern recognition 37 00:02:22,415 --> 00:02:27,044 through machine learning, they produce new texts 38 00:02:27,125 --> 00:02:32,786 that are in the same style and addressing similar content 39 00:02:32,849 --> 00:02:37,634 as the entire corpus of a given authors writings. 40 00:02:37,810 --> 00:02:47,180 I use this algorithms to produce descriptions of my non existing but possible artworks. 41 00:02:47,239 --> 00:02:52,356 In a similar way that recently artificial intelligence algorithms were used to 42 00:02:52,411 --> 00:02:55,771 generate a non existent Rembrandt painting. 43 00:02:55,829 --> 00:03:02,021 I used these algorithms to generate descriptions of works that i could potentially make. 44 00:03:02,046 --> 00:03:03,970 [subtly rumbling noises] 45 00:03:04,009 --> 00:03:04,810 [crackling noise] 46 00:03:04,860 --> 00:03:08,322 After obtaining these new descriptions 47 00:03:08,347 --> 00:03:15,333 I created visualisations of these new potential works in a form of a hologram. 48 00:03:15,358 --> 00:03:18,314 [crackling noises] 49 00:03:18,339 --> 00:03:24,901 CURATOR: This exhibition happening in Łódź has also another layers 50 00:03:24,940 --> 00:03:29,843 because the history of Łódź and the history of avant garde in Łódź 51 00:03:29,876 --> 00:03:35,286 is of course inherently linked to the history of the capitalist production. 52 00:03:35,404 --> 00:03:38,548 And in the works of Agnieszka 53 00:03:38,587 --> 00:03:43,700 one can observe how, what was called the industrial capitalism 54 00:03:43,759 --> 00:03:50,195 is transformed into totally new systems of labour 55 00:03:50,250 --> 00:03:58,497 that are not anymore linked to particular place or particular kind of work 56 00:03:58,615 --> 00:04:05,544 but it's all about the dispersed community of the old line working class. 57 00:04:05,583 --> 00:04:09,197 [quiet mesmerizing music] 58 00:04:09,234 --> 00:04:14,207 ARTIST: Many of the works are related to the fact that today 59 00:04:14,232 --> 00:04:21,279 the entire society becomes one gigantic factory of data production and exploitation. 60 00:04:21,329 --> 00:04:26,974 Part of this factory is new emerging digital working class 61 00:04:27,032 --> 00:04:35,318 which is response to automation and to the fact that many factories are closing 62 00:04:35,357 --> 00:04:39,634 and workers that are laid off are looking for new ways of working. 63 00:04:39,712 --> 00:04:44,525 The new working class of the so called ghost workers 64 00:04:44,575 --> 00:04:49,497 are digital workers, working in front of their computer screens online. 65 00:04:49,586 --> 00:04:56,189 They are the workers of Amazon Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform 66 00:04:56,214 --> 00:04:58,808 and other labour platforms. 67 00:04:58,885 --> 00:05:03,807 This workers are underpaid and this workers were very often exploited off. 68 00:05:03,886 --> 00:05:08,085 And in two of my projects that are part of Errorism 69 00:05:08,163 --> 00:05:12,633 I worked with this new working class 70 00:05:12,692 --> 00:05:21,630 by crowdsourcing simple tasks such as drawing lines or submitting selfies. 71 00:05:21,728 --> 00:05:24,759 And what is important for this projects is that 72 00:05:24,825 --> 00:05:29,650 they allowed me to redistribute capital from the sales of this works. 73 00:05:29,708 --> 00:05:32,931 Whenever any of these works is sold in the art market 74 00:05:32,993 --> 00:05:39,322 the workers sharing the profits by a bonus system of Amazon. 75 00:05:42,771 --> 00:05:46,657 CURATOR: Agnieszka is constantly investigating issues of collectives 76 00:05:46,716 --> 00:05:50,180 of collective intelligence and collective labour. 77 00:05:50,219 --> 00:05:54,728 And the works which you can see at the exhibition 78 00:05:54,810 --> 00:06:01,154 are devoted to the collective work of internet users, 79 00:06:01,212 --> 00:06:09,021 the users of platforms such as Reddit or to the termite colonies as well. 80 00:06:09,130 --> 00:06:34,250 [quiet mesmerizing music, crackling noises] 81 00:06:34,289 --> 00:06:40,460 subtitles: Kinga Andrzejewska