Let’s remember generative artificial intelligence (AI). As soon as you enter the command, the response arrives immediately. At this time, the gap between the question and the answer converges to virtually nothing. Because of the interaction close to simultaneity.
Installation artist Oh Won said, “In the history of human history using technology, all human questions have been embedded in intention, that is, attention. However, as it becomes ‘zero’ in the time it takes to get an answer after AI, the questioner criticizes that he is forgetting what his attention was.
I met artist Oh, who recently presented the installation art work “Mirror Mirror On The Wall: AI Between Attention And Intention” at 111CM, a complex cultural space in Suwon City, with this awareness of the problem.
“In the past, when people didn’t get an immediate answer, they had to remove countless clues they encountered on their way to the answer, so they needed accurate attention. That’s not the case anymore. This is because the sum of the paths has become too short, so you don’t have to wake up to intension. In this work, I wanted to think about us losing our attention.”
In artist Oh’s latest work, a mirror in the front stands out first. It was inspired by the mirror in Snow White. A long time ago, Snow White’s stepmother (Queen) told the mirror. “Mirror, mirror. “Who is the prettiest in the world?” According to the author, intension is hidden in the stepmother’s question to get the answer, “The Queen is the most beautiful.” The stepmother did not get the ‘answer’, so the ‘Snow White’ narrative began.
However, writer Oh criticizes that modern humans who use Generative AI do not even meet the level of questions asked by stepmothers. This is because of AI, which has to answer any question immediately. Is AI a hope to mankind.
“If you look at it broadly, I think it’s a world where there’s no attention at all, and it’s just a question that’s close to checking.” We humans have forgotten the intension that we have to make ourselves wriggle inside, and sometimes my intension is ignored by others or ignored by others.”
On the white wall opposite the mirror, you can see the screen of the search box he produced. Visitors can write questions here as if they were putting a prompt on a Generative AI. But the answer doesn’t come up even if you ask a question. ‘…Only the sentence ‘thinking’ blinks with the cursor.
“When you wait for the answer to come out, you forget what your initial attention was.” I wanted to ask you that very moment. Perhaps, isn’t the modern digital society a society that only demands attention from others where attention has disappeared? I wanted to ask back how AI gives meaning, how reality is formed.”
The stage name ‘Owon’ means the numbers 0 and 1, and ‘O’.It is marked as ‘One’. He has been paying keen attention to the way humans think in the complex world we live in, and has been working on installation art for more than a decade. Why were the numbers 0 and 1.
“I don’t think there’s anything between 0 and 1, but there’s actually an infinite number. I think human behavior is one of the small and powerless paradoxes that lie between them. I hope my works to the world will be remembered as one of those things.”
[Reporter Kim Yu-tae]
