What will happen to visual arts when machines go further than merely expressing our thoughts and sensations through the image-based technologies of emoticons, Tumblr feeds, and ephemeral Snapchats, and actually begin to understand and interpret images? The curatorial experiment For Machine Use Only, by Mohammad Salemy (b. 1967, Kermanshah/New York), is a human/machine collaboration. It takes advantage of the machinic gaze of Google’s reverse image search engine, through which users upload a picture instead of inputting words to obtain results.
The project consists of Salemy inviting a group of artists to submit digital documentation or original works into Google’s image engine. The feed of responding images is then presented for the exhibition, enticing artists to imagine a near-future where artificial intelligence interprets and reconfigures art practices and their tailored images. Aside from its utopian impulses, the project also teases at a possible dystopia where the interpretation and absorption of art is placed into the cold, flat, and superficial grips of corporatized algorithms and smarter-than-human robots. The first iteration of this project was presented in January 2015 at Vienna’s Schneiderei artist-run center. For GB11, Salemy has documented the artworks presented in the exhibition and has processed them according to the parameters of the project, exhibiting a selection of images form the search-engine results.
Salemy is an independent critic and curator from Iran. He is interested in the relationship between art and technology and is uniquely attentive to the future and prehistory of technology. Salemy is one of the founding members of The New Centre for Research & Practice, an online educational platform, which is one of the partner institutions for the Infra-School program of GB11. His course “Temperature check – the making of a biennale where art is center stage,” comprising artist lectures and group discussions, took place at the New Centre during April and May 2016. JV
self-presentation:
My work sits uncomfortably in the space generated through the clash between artistic and curatorial practices. I work with artists and thinkers, similar to how other artists work with different materials and media. I am part of a larger episto-political – part epistemological and part political – attempt at reconfiguring a new emancipatory role for science, technology, and industry both within and outside of contemporary art. In this capacity, I organize exhibitions which move beyond the confines of the curatorial field and are considered by many to become a work of art in and of themselves. I write on art, technology and geopolitics. I utilize my Facebook profile on a daily basis to start discussions about what I consider to be urgent and/or relevant. I believe for an art practice to be rigorous, it must be convincing both in terms of its content and form, its ethics as well as its aesthetics.
