Bots vs. AI: Two Kinds of Software Art Take Different Approaches to the Digital Commons

"AI: More than Human," an exhibition that appeared at London's Barbican Art Gallery this past summer and can now be seen at the Forum in Groningen, the Netherlands, mirrors the muddled zeitgeist of artificial intelligence. It seeks to bring together the various elements of art, research, and commerce, displaying interactive installations as well as projects applying AI in fields as diverse as agriculture and neuroscience. Rather than untangle these distinct areas, Barbican curator Anna Holsgrove has chosen to intermix them under sections titled the Dream of AI, Mind Machines, Data Worlds, and Endless Evolution. I saw the show in the company of computational artist Memo Akten, who has been at the forefront of many micro-movements, learning new tools to study how they expand human creativity. At the Barbican, Akten presented the latest iteration of Learning to See (2017), an interactive installation in which machine-learning software analyzes a live feed from a camera pointed at a table covered with everyday objects. The software interprets this visual input based on data sets, sourced online, that contain tens of thousands of images--ocean views, fires, flowers, and star fields.