Department of Cultural Affairs

Photo by LRM
Interior Kinematics has automatic pitching machines continuously pitching balls into the net of another machine. In a pitch dark exhibition room, viewers only see the start of the balls’ parabolic trajectory. When the balls reach their highest point, the room’s LED lights turn on at once.

Rewritten by Leo Maliksi
 
“Beyond Consciousness”, the exhibition at the Taipei Digital Arts Center from November 21 to December 12 tried to explore whether digital systems made up of data and algorithms could develop consciousness, and what kind of mindfulness would that be?
 
The soul of artificial intelligence is really a huge database uploaded by humans. Such an aggregate of information then gives birth to a complex entity. Can this immense universe of data eventually lead to a collective consciousness that perceives and responds to our world?
 
Will AI eventually break through a barrier and leave behind all human activity?
 
Science has not yet clearly defined the meaning of consciousness. Generally speaking, it refers to a person's understanding of the environment and one’s self. Do machines really have such an understanding?


Photo by LRM
Wang Lien-Cheng (王連晟) talks about the algorithms he used in creating his installation art.

During the exhibition, artist Wang Lien-Cheng (王連晟) attempted to explore various aspects of machine consciousness in his solo exhibition.
 
His Interior Kinematics used a ball to simulate the process of amassing and transmitting information. Automatic pitching machines continuously pitch balls into the net of another machine. In a pitch dark exhibition room, viewers only see the start of the balls’ parabolic trajectory. When the balls reach their highest point, the room’s LED lights turn on at once. Machines within this system seem to have a consciousness of when the balls reach their maximum vertex.
 
Interior Kinematics wanted to express the worthless action of the machines whose only job was to throw a ball. And this action had very short durations, forming an optical illusion that stayed in the audience's mind for a brief moment of time.


Photo by LRM
For his installation artwork Summoner, Wang installed a pendulum that swung between two mobile phones. At end of the pendulum is an electromagnetic wave receiving device. When it sensed the electromagnetic waves emitted by the mobile phone, it amplified the sound of those waves. 

In Summoner, an installation artwork, Wang sought to express electromagnetic induction as a kind of supernatural phenomenon.
 
A program that Wang wrote on the mobile phone automatically connected the phone to an online search engine, whose search results were then displayed on the screen. He searched historical data that people left on the Internet using the keywords “ghost” and “god.” These are words often used by the people of Taiwan, and a small portion of the population considers the spiritual as electromagnetic energy.


Photo by LRM
Regeneration Movement has dot matrix printers. This work discusses the problem of global electronic wastes and the visualization of information.

Taiwan is a country of consumer electronic products. Every year companies introduce newer and more attractive hardware, and various functional consumer electronic products. Even though they may still be in good working conditions, users just discard them just to buy new ones on the market. Regeneration Movement sought to express this consumerism.
 
Wang collected many second-hand or discarded dot matrix printers and repaired them. He made them run through a program that used information packets from the Internet.
 
The exhibition sought to portray the hopeless dependence of humanity on machines and asked the question: Will this dependence eventually give the machines human consciousness?