One of the works i discovered last week at Mal Au Pixel in Paris was Electroscape 004, an installation that has its autonomous life and leaves the “user” aside.

Artificial Intelligences and bots are increasingly populating real or virtual spaces. They are even sometimes standing alone in those spaces, waiting for hypothetical users to interact with them. First designed to fake human intelligence, the bots are now frequently used to interact with humans and to mimic them. When they are programmed to stimulate user’s reaction through keyboards, screens, or other media, real human beings usually bring the variation in the discussion that often makes them perceive the A.I. as a real person.

But what happens if two A.I./chat bots talk together? What happens if, in addition, it is the same “brain” that drives the two hardware (two game consoles in this case)? What will they talk about?

Electroscape 004 develops these questions and sets up a kind of auto-logical and self reflexive environment (A.I. to A.I., PS2 to XBOX, self-spaces) where visitors are placed in the fringe, in a passive and frustrating posture, witnessing the two game consoles interacting and playing with each other, listening to their chat.

To whom does the space of the installation belong to? Is it public? Is it private? Does it belong to the two machines? All three? And how are used the data that are being collected by the machines?

By electronic architecture studio Fabric | ch.

Also by Fabric: Perpetual (tropical) Sunshine.
Related: Roger Ibars‘ Self-made objects which have lost any interest in interacting with the users and derive pleasure from themselves.