“Especies I, II y III” by Mónica Rikić

Title:

Especies I, II y III

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Artist Statement:

This artwork is framed in the line thought of technodiversity, promoted by the philosopher Yuk Hui, which invites us to break with the monolithic vision of technological development and accept that there is a multiplicity of technologies and not a universal one.

Within this context, “Especies I, II y III” focuses on imagining the possibilities of evolution of technologies in an alternative way. Believing in the existence of technodiversities implies that technology becomes part of the cultural plane and that in the future, perhaps, it will be considered part of the biodiversity of each community. Starting from this speculative assumption, this project questions whether we will be able to include artificial cognitive systems as part of the configuration of the world, accepting them as an independent species of conscious and sentient organisms.

Beyond questioning the technological resources necessary to develop artificial consciousness, this project wants to argue that its possibilities of existence also lie in a matter of philosophical attribution. To do so, the set of three robotic devices that configure this artwork are built from algorithmic structures inspired by philosophical principles that define possible existential, evolutionary, conscious and sensitive processes through the creative coding. They represent processes far from the simulation of the human, in search of the machinic condition itself.

This small inorganic ecosystem simulate, through physical-digital behaviors, processes that invite us to identify them as conscious organisms. They are dramaturgical devices staging a possible evolution of AI, imagining a possible integration of these systems in the future. The set is accompanied by a fictional audio story that narrates the process of evolution of the devices.