Sanela Jahić
Uncertainty-in-the-Loop
Exhibition
23 September – 23 October 2020
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
Part of the programme:
Hyperemployment – Post-work, Online Labour and Automation
See the first phase of the project here.
As algorithms ripple through and integrate further with our work and daily lives, the future of work projections note creativity, flexibilty and innovative thinking as forecast skill demands that will be required of employees. These skills, which have traditionally also been attributed to the profession of the artist, are supposed to be among the ones most resistant to or the least exposed to automation. Many people think that what they do requires creativity, and that cannot be expressed in the form of executable code or emulated by a machine. Contemporary perception usually sees creativity as something new, divergent and original that takes people by surprise. And yet, many tasks which might entail human faculties such as intuition, empathy, and creativity, are already being outsourced to increasingly capable automated and automatising systems that just perform them in differently.
There are many ways to distill something into data points. In her recent work, Sanela Jahić converted her labour as an artist – her works, research and interests of the past 14 years – into data. As data, the features of her artworks become tables of numbers; each creative decision emerges in a row of digits. The artist then turned the decision making over to a predictive algorithm. The machine uses the dataset to sift through and identify patterns in her artistic labour in order to predict the content and aesthetics of her next artwork. The first stage of this multiyear project was presented at Aksioma in 2018 with the exhibition The Labour of Making Labour Disappear.
Yet such predictive power is limited in its forecast of future outcome, because it gives a selection from among ready-made choices. And even though this may be an original selection, as calculating predictor of the future it is still weighted down in the past. At every step of the way, the capability to create new choices is heavily constrained by choices that came before. In other words, conceiving artworks from the same conceptual depository is not really imagining something new, but a narrow alteration of existing inputs. To break away from the machine algorithm rolling out combinations of prior existing data, and to avoid sparking a feedback loop, the artist – in the final stage of this project – provides the machine a look at her contemporary investigations as an early window into the present disorganization of her thoughts. The algorithm then determines tomorrow’s artwork based on observations today with the past flickering in the rear–view mirror. On the basis of the predictive model, Pataka was created, a work that listens to what our voices tell machines about us.
THE AUTHOR
Sanela Jahić (1980, Kranj) graduated in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana in 2008, and received her master’s degree in 2010 in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Jahić is an intermedia artist, who constructs visual and technologically supported kinetic objects and installations. Her artistic practice often involves collaboration with specialists for mechanical engineering, automation, software and electronics. She lives and works in Škofja Loka. Jahić has exhibited her work in numerous shows in Slovenia and abroad.
BROCHURE
Aude Launay
The Return of the Dead Author
PostScriptUM #34
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CREDITS
Author: Sanela Jahić
Technical support: Andrej Primožič
Graphic design: Vasja Cenčič
Development and programming of the predictive model and data visualisation: Iztok Lebar Bajec
Development and programming of the predictive model: Jure Demšar
Research insight and assistance: Nicholas Cummins, Jude Dineley
Dynamic data visualisation design: Peter Primožič
Assistance in filming and picture post-production: Toni Mlakar
Sound post-production: Julij Zornik
Production:
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2020
Co-production:
Drugo more, Rijeka
Partner:
Škofja Loka Museum
Realized in the framework of the Dopolavoro flagship of the Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture project, with support from the City of Rijeka – Department of Culture, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.
RELATED EVENTS
Sanela Jahić
The Labour of Making Labour Disappear
Exhibition
12 December 2018 – 11 January 2019
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
Hyperemployment
Exhibition
7 November 2019 – 19 January 2020
MGLC – International Centre for Graphic Arts, Ljubljana
Curated by: Domenico Quaranta
Artists: Danilo Correale, Elisa Giardina Papa, Sanela Jahić, Silvio Lorusso, Jonas Lund, Michael Mandiberg, Sebastian Schmieg, Guido Segni
Automate all the Things!
Symposium
14 – 15 January 2020
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana
Moderna galerija
Speakers: Elisa Giardina Papa, Sanela Jahić, Silvio Lorusso, Michael Mandiberg, Domenico Quaranta, Sašo Sedlaček, Sebastian Schmieg
Sanela Jahić
Uncertainty-in-the-Loop
Exhibition
5 – 27 November 2020
DeltaLab, Rijeka, Croatia