The Grand Palais is hosting an exhibition like no other: works created by artists using increasingly intelligent robots. Some thirty works give us access to the immersive and interactive virtual world, to the sensitive experience of the enlarged body, of space and time being turned upside down.
Dn an increasingly mechanized society, artists are all the more interested in robots as artificial intelligence is changing the existence of humans and even the condition of the work of art: its production, its exhibition, its distribution, its conservation, its reception.
In this dangerous game, they have a long experience: since prehistoric caves, the artists have known how to play from their technical background. Their work is all the more surprising since they have at their service increasingly powerful software, which gives the work greater and greater autonomy, a capacity to generate infinite forms and an interactivity that constantly modifies the game.
The contemporary works presented here around a few visionary icons (Tinguely, Schöffer, Molnar, Mohr or Xenakis) give a good idea of the questions of artists who are also ours: what is an artist? What is a work of art? What can a robot do that an artist cannot? If it has artificial intelligence, does a robot have imagination? Who decides: the artist, the engineer, the robot, the viewer, all together? Can we speak of a collective work?
The exhibition takes place in three sequences :
1. The creation machine Robots are activated and their movements are sometimes so funny and so "physical" that we would gladly lend them an animal or human dimension, or even a "psychology".
Jean Tinguely, Nam June Paik, Nicolas Schöffer, Leonel Moura, Patrick Tresset, So Kanno and Takahiro Yamaguchi, J. Lee Thompson, Arcangelo Sassolino.
2. The programmed work The robot becomes invisible, its computer and algorithmic program integrates the work and all know-how disappears in favour of the magic of shapes generated ad infinitum and which change according to the body movements of the viewers.
Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, Iannis Xenakis, Demian Conrad, Raquel Kogan, Ryoji Ikeda, Pascal Dombis, Elias Crespin, Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, Edmond Couchot and Michel Bret, Miguel Chevalier, Joan Fontcuberta, Michael Hansmeyer and Peter Kogler.
3. The robot becomes emancipated Deep Learning makes the robot more and more intelligent and active to the point that it can not only compete with the human but increase it, merge with it, taunt it, double it?
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Catherine Ikam and Louis Fléri, Stelarc, Nicolas Darrot, Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni, Koji Fukada, Oscar Sharp, Daft Punk, Pascal Haudressy, Memo Akten, ORLAN, Takashi Murakami.
Immersive works, paintings, sculptures, mobiles, cinema, design, and music: all the creations presented in this exhibition are the result of collaborations between artists and robotic programs invented and put at the service of art. Computer programs that are not only intelligent, but also generate new shapes and figures that give us something to see and think about. A first version of the exhibition was presented at the Astana Contemporary Art Centre as part of the international exhibition Astana Expo 17 from June to September 2017.
Commissioner's Office : Laurence Bertrand Dorléacart historian, Sciences Po and Jérôme NeutresDirector of Strategy and Development at Rmn-Grand Palais Artistic Council : Miguel Chevalier, artist
Technical Department : Nicolas Gaudelet
Scenography and lighting : Sylvie Jodar, Jodar Architecture Workshop
Graphic design : ÉricandMarie
This exhibition is organized by the Réunion des musées nationaux - Grand Palais
Information and reservations : www.grandpalais.fr
Grand Palais - Galeries nationales Clemenceau - April 5 to July 9, 2018
Header photo Patrick Tresset, Human Study #2.d La Grande Vanité au corbeau et au renard, 2004-2017, Three robots, a stuffed fox and a crow, drawings on paper © Patrick Tresset
