Half Half
Curatorial Statement
Joel Kwong

According to Greek mythology, humans were once whole beings and wielded great power. In their hubris, they challenged Zeus, king of the gods and the universe, who in rage commanded thunder to split the humans in half. Zeus said to them, “Go find your other half,” before scattering these humans and their halves all over the world, erasing their memories so they would never remember what their counterparts looked like. From then on, humans spend their entire lives searching for the other person who completes them so they can become whole and powerful again. This is a myth that has been passed down over generations by oral tradition. In a similar vein, the word “technology” originates from Ancient Greek: τέχνη (techne) and -λογία (-logia), or “technologia,” the study of techniques and methods. If this myth about one’s other half and technology appear entirely unrelated, one may perhaps find their connection in the revelatory words of Nam June Paik, the father of video art:

“Our life is half natural and half technological. Half-and-half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech, you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life.”

Here, “half-and-half” may refer to equal halves of a larger entity or an unknown equilibrium. If we calibrate the relationship between humans and machines on a scale of zero to one hundred, every single point at which we may achieve equilibrium is a variation. How do we build a balance that is symbotic? With a main exhibition and a curated series of programs, this year’s festival leads visitors to “dream,” a dream in which we assimilate, think, rehearse, and learn about future life. We see our imminent possibilities when navigating between reality and imagination. In Art of War, Sun Tzu writes that the best course of attack is to understand: If one knows the enemy and oneself, one need not fear a hundred battles. This is not to say that technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are the antagonists of humankind, but it is wise, surely, to also learn more about the capabilities of a friend, ally, partner. We also need to know ourselves before we know others. In The Storytelling Animal: How Stories make us Human, Jonathan Gottschall stipulates that man are creatures of storytelling. Even for a singular text, with people’s imagination, a tale can unfold in infinite ways that entertain and also teach people to face difficulties and live bravely. Through stories, people learn to self-heal, destress, and relieve their emotions. Using the language of escape rooms, artist duo Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger explore reality and fantasy in Dream-e-scape, bringing visitors into an immersive lucid dream. Contrary to the idea that dreams are just dreams, the line between the real world and the imaginary world is often blurry. If an immersive installation is a form of lucid dreaming, a VR device is the start of a personal journey into the virtual realm. Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s RE-ANIMATED is a reconstructed environment in the form of a paradisal garden, a habitat for the extinct Kaua’i ʻōʻō bird. The landscape is made from realistic geographic and ecological data as it examines the interstices between extinction, conservation, and immortality through artistic experience.

Having learned more about ourselves, we move on to learning more about others. Discussions about art and technology tend to involve a lot of technical discourse, but what exactly are their implications? Rather than focusing on the rapidity of scientific development and the changes its interventions introduce to the world, we are more interested in how we should face our imminent future. Last year, the festival presented a video work about human-machine interaction, which ends with the phrase “Co-AI-existence”—AI being the acronym for artificial intelligence but also the transliteration for love from Mandarin. We continue this line of inquiry in this year’s edition; if humans and machines are to co-exist, we might as well get to know each other well. Design studio Ultravioletto believes that AI is capable of replicating human thought to grow and respond to their environments by understanding and inference. If AIs can read us like a book, how do we in turn comprehend them? In Neural Mirror, the viewer looks at their reflection in a mirror but sees themselves as moving data points, a perspective more attributed to AIs, who observe the world as masses of data, than humans, who rely primarily on sight. How do we reconcile these differences? Some may consider technology insentient and AI to be mere machines, but they already assume distinct personas in our lives in the forms of Alexa, Siri, and the virtual assistant from the movie Her, a woman who eludes touch and captivates by voice alone. Everyone gets a virtual assistant MOA in Charles Ayats’s My Own Assistant, which brings us to an interactive augmented reality set in a future world. Your story with your MOA quickly unfolds, just between the two of you… If sound isn’t enough, might adding video hit the spot? Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts technological singularity—that is, when AI surpasses humans—to occur by 2045. By then, not all forms of AI will survive, and some will be inevitably eliminated. Greek artist Kyriaki Goni’s video work Not allowed for algorithmic audiences compiles research on AI development and voice interfaces to create a fictional narrative. In a monologue, an AI assistant who is about to disappear teaches humans how to avoid being heard by algorithms. In these universes, is the relationship between humans and machines for better or for worse? Do we fight with or against each other?

If an AI assistant feels unrelatable still, let’s talk about something more on trend: dating apps. There are many to choose from, and those who haven’t tried them out would have heard of them at least. Think about the conversations on these apps—how many people are talking on these platforms every day, every minute, every second? If AI machines were to participate, what would they learn? With a background in quantum computing, artist Dr Libby Heaney created Lady Chatterley’s Tinderbot. It is apparent that AI has moved beyond just offering assistance to humans by now. Through simple dialogue, the work explores the processes of speech, communications, and understanding in more lighthearted conversation to reexamine human-machine interactions in a new light. But the existence of bots should not be any of a surprise. Titled The Book of Half Half, this year’s Project Room programme is based on a real-life dating app that can be downloaded and used. Comprising a fictional tale about digital matchmaking and machine learning as well as music, the project offers an online and in-person futuristic experience.

Altogether, the works in the main exhibition discuss the myriad possibilities of our lives with machines—in fact and fiction, as friends or foes. To further investigate these connections, this year’s Unconference focuses on the Power of Words as a theme to explore the relationship between technology and writing, from poetry and scripts written by AIs to new form of Last words. The program also includes a special screening of three films by Benjamin, an AI who collaborated with human directors and technical researcher to produce their collaborative work. Last year’s festival, Yesterday’s Fiction, was on text and technology; Half Half furthers this topic as it questions how, amid science’s rapid interventions, AI and machine learning (as we have come to know them) create bonds as well as limitations for us. In a way, it doesn’t matter whether humans and machines are meeting each other halfway. Through media art, people envisage the future to explore the apprehensions and motivations of co-existing with technology. Like a mirror, AI lets us scrutinize our inner demons as we consider our next steps forward.

May science be kind and all forms of life co-exist in peace.