Máquina Deseante (Machine Yearning)

Máquina Deseante [Machine Yearning] was a weekend-long survey of personal investigations and critical perspectives on generative AI by artists. The program started with an evening at the Museo Tamayo on February 9th. The event was co-presented by KADIST, the University of Monterrey, and FERIA MATERIAL.

With: Nouf Aljowaysir, Sofia Crespo, Anthony Discenza, Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon, Manuel DeLanda, John Menick, Juan Obando, Angélica Piedrahita, Amparo Vázquez.

The dawning era of generative AI marks a shift from pattern recognition to synthetic pattern creation—a feature that brings global artistic practice, often lurking in the shadows, directly into the spotlight. Machine Yearning turns away from questions of intelligence, to consider urges and hallucinations, intensities and anxieties. These deeply human impulses (often associated with artists) serve as contrast to the cold calculations of algorithmic systems that are trained on the internet’s avalanche of human creation.

While public discourse is rife with cautionary tales, artists have privately been experimenting with these tools, augmenting their chain-of-production and enhancing prototyping and ideation. The goal of this program is to blend this curiosity and criticality, combining two deeply human capacities: personal inquiry and self-exploration alongside thought-experiments that provoke concern and skepticism. Together they might help us better understand this transitional moment, a moment where these tools and operations are widely available and used by thousands around the world for the first time.

Accompanying the program, KADIST and FERIA MATERIAL commissioned the generative AI series “Bathers” by Anthony Discenza, that was presented on digital billboards across Mexico City.

5pm Screening (loop)

Sofia Crespo, Temporally Uncaptured, 2023

5:30pm Introduction

Doreen Ríos (KADIST), Amparo Vázquez (UDEM)

5:45pm Screenings

Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon, I’M HERE 17.12.2022 5:44, 2023

Nouf Aljowaysir, Ana Min Wein (Where am I From)?, 2022

John Menick, autoextinction, 2023

Juan Obando, They/Them, 2023

6:30pm Conversation

Doreen Ríos, Angélica Piedrahita, Amparo Vázquez

7:15pm  Keynote Presentation

Manuel DeLanda