SIGGRAPH Asia 2020: Artist Talks
Conference:
Overview:
Art Center Nabi?s 20 years has been the time of exploration into the new man-machine age engendered by digital technology. While following the development of this new technology, artists, scientists and engineers along with scholars of humanities have tried to make sense of the technology; what it does to human psyches, spirits and minds, as well as to our social relations and organizations. We have witnessed that human beings cannot be understood separated from the dominant mnemonic technology, i.e. digital media, because we build our identities with and upon that technology. We also have seen that the recent development of digital technology, such as machine learning, has tipped the man-machine balance towards machine knowledge that is becoming more and more opaque and alien to humans. New fears as well as new opportunities abound. This is all the more reason why we should look upon man-machine symbiosis from critical as well as from creative perspectives. How do we co-exist with machines that have already become an integral part of ourselves? How do we claim human dignity when our thoughts and behaviors are increasingly organized by machines? Or is ?being human?, or ?human dignity? a relic from the past age?
Ultimately, we are asking the same old questions: who am I and who are we. The more diverse the methods of asking these questions, the richer our cultural legacy may be.
