We are well aware that the first week of January 2023 has just finished, but if you haven't already tried Chat GPT, you haven't really been connected to the modern world these last few weeks. It's phenomenal AI-powered ability to create prose, conversation and so much more has big ramifications for all aspects of life (we see you cheering students!), but it's been several years, if not decades, that many critics and academics have contemplated whether or not Artificial Intelligence is capable of making Art with a capital a.

Art, an expression that by its historical definition, is inherent to our species or so we like to think. We have yet to see Art made by dogs (paw prints do not count) and yet, AI generated art is all the rage in the last few years. Feed an AI a series of prompts, and it will mine millions of existing references to create "new" images. And yet what of that very human of skills - curating the images themselves?  Curation is that
necessary - and biased - tool which manages our relationship to creative content. Can AI curate - or more specifically, yes it can but can it do it convincingly?

This is what the upcoming exhibition ‘The Algorithmic Pedestal’ unpacks seeking to move the conversation from creation to choice.  Artist
Fabienne Hess was pitted against an algorithm to make a selection of images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s open access collection in order to shortlist images to show within Notting Hill's J/M Gallery where the resulting works are hung. Fabienne chose 30 images that spoke to her of loss, a sentiment she sees as inherently human. She considered visual metaphors and each image’s historical context in her choices.  Meanwhile, researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute fed Instagram's algorithm the same collection with instructions to select a similar amount of images for the exhibition.

‘The Algorithmic Pedestal’ invites us to compare and reflect on the differences between human and non-human curation. To see if we can tease out trends in the algorithm and contemplate the mechanisms with which AI is advancing into what was previously, exclusively human, curatorial territory.

Open until the 17th January, 2023 at the J/M Gallery, London. 

Cover image:
Lover’s Eyes, Dale T. Johnson Fund, 1999 from MOMA website

Tags: AI , Algorithm , Exhibition , Art