Cat Royale returns as part of Science Gallery London’s latest exhibition, AI: Who’s Looking After Me?
21 June 2023 – 20 January 2024, Free Entry
AI: Who’s Looking After Me? takes a questioning, surprising, playful look at the ways Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already shaping so many areas of our lives, and asks if we can really rely on these technologies for our wellbeing and happiness. Presented in collaboration with FutureEverything, the exhibition explores who holds the power, distributes the benefits, and bears the burden of existing AI systems.
Most of us know very little about what AI is or how it works, but so much of how we’re cared for in different aspects of our lives – be it love, justice or health – is undergoing transformational change. AI: Who’s Looking After Me? fractures this singular, monolithic ‘AI’ apart, and looks at the range of ways it’s changing how we’re cared for.
Cat Royale, which features alongside works by Air Giant, Fast Familiar and James Bridle, is a futurist utopia where cats are watched over lovingly by an AI robot arm, tending to their every need. The film and installation documenting cats’ experiences with an AI caregiver probe the future impact of new technologies on animal care… and the trade-offs involved. The work has been made as part of our role as cultural ambassadors for the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub and will be accompanied by live research from author and computer scientist Dr Kate Devlin, King’s Department of Digital Humanities.
So many of our conversations about AI treat it as this distant, sleek, even magical thing; our attentions are daily directed towards the latest product or scandal. In all this hype and marketing, I think we’re losing sight of the human — both in how AI technologies are made, and the many ways they’re already woven into our lives. To be able to grasp and shape the course of AI’s journey, we need to grapple with its messy, multiple realities and I hope this exhibition can be an invitation to do that. It’s characteristic of what we’re trying to do as a gallery, to nurture unlikely, inventive collaborations and dialogues and be a home for the cultural work that emerges from them. – Siddharth Khajuria, Director of Science Gallery London
Artificial Intelligence technologies have been recomposing our world through new taxonomies, narratives and aesthetics, creating a monocultural view of our society. At FutureEverything, we believe that art and cross disciplinary exchange can help us imagine better, collective stories about technology, moving away from the hype and corporate narratives. The season provides a much-needed platform for not only sharing different perspectives, but also, for enabling collaboration and discourse. – Irini Papadimitriou, Creative Director of FutureEverything
Read the full programme announcement here.
