What is it to be human with Noosa Regional Gallery
Michael Brennan prepares for a powerful and interrogative art exhibition exploring the future and our role in it.
This is my second article for this edition of IN Noosa Magazine. I usually only write the one. And this one relates to my other article on the next page. I won’t rehash it here though – read the following pages if you’re curious. I only mention it because of the common theme – artists imagining possible futures.
Experimenta is an arts organisation dedicated to commissioning and exhibiting contemporary art that’s driven by ideas and shaped by technology.
Collapsing the boundaries between art and tech, Experimenta creates opportunities for collaboration, audience engagement and artist development – all the while interrogating the ever-evolving understanding of what it is to be human.
Now, I think I know what it is to be human. At least, I thought I did up until about sometime in the past 12 months. Even though Chat GPT launched its online artificial intelligence tool two or so years ago, at first we were equally marvelling at its… well, intelligence… and scoffing at how easy it was to spot a job application written by someone using the platform. But now you can make a convincing photographic image of a person that’s never existed before with just a couple of written prompts.
You can even make them say and do things that were never said or done.
And let’s not even get started on the humanitarian aspect of what it is to be human. We’ve evidently got a very tenuous grip on that one.
I’m getting sidetracked.
Experimenta: Emergence has been conceived by Brisbane-based curator, Lubi Thomas, and brings together a diverse ensemble of artists from around the world with a shared interest in unpacking the forces that are shaping our future and considering what emergent ideas and technologies might be key to how we experience them.
The exhibition will tour the country for the next couple of years, however Noosa has the privilege of being the place where it all begins.
There are 13 projects in total by leading Australian and international artists across diverse of art forms, including screen-based works, installations, robotics, participatory and generative art.
Sky by Danish artist, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm, is an interactive AI created to talk to you about all matters climate change, learning from our opinions, biases and prejudices and reflecting them back.
Liam Young, who splits his time between Australia and the US, has created Planet City – a video work that imagines 10 billion people living in a single dense metropolis, leaving the rest of Earth to regenerate as wilderness. And the Sunshine Coast’s own Leah Barclay extends her deep listening practice with Tidal Motion – an installation that transforms tidal data into a shifting soundscape, inviting audiences to dissolve into the ocean’s depths while reflecting on ecological interconnectedness and our relationship with the sea.
Experimenta: Emergence weaves together perspectives and ideas that ask questions about the rapidly evolving world we’re hurtling through and our place within it. While the projects are primarily speculative, they draw on real world possibilities. And if AI and global tensions have taught us anything, the ‘difficult to imagine’ can become a reality in the blink of an eye – human or otherwise.
