Navigating Through eXistenZ - Navigating through Urban-scape - Collecting memories of Brno
2024, Linz, Austria
Ars Electronica Festival 2024
In collaboration with Jana Horáková (CZ), Filip Johánek (CZ) and Karolína Segéňová (SK)
The audio-visual installation “Collecting memories of Brno” consists of two parts. The auditory component captures a time-lapse of Brno’s soundscape; the visual aspect showcases hallucinatory, collective memories of Brno, reimagined through photographs processed by machine learning algorithms. The elements intertwine to quest the theme ‘search of lost time’.
AI acts not merely as a tool but as a collaborator that interprets and processes human input to produce new visual forms. This reimagining of Brno’s visual memories through AI introduces a dialogue between the city’s historical identity and its potential future perceptions, manipulated and envisioned by machine intelligence.
Incorporating principles of phenomenology, particularly as articulated by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the installation emphasizes perception as the fundamental avenue for understanding our world. Viewers are invited to engage in both sensory and interpretive aspects as they interact with the two key components of field recording based sound composition and AI-generated videos. This interaction is not merely about observing but involves a deep interpretative process that engages with layers of memory in ‘search of lost time,’ and the ongoing transformation of perception in the digital age.
The concept of collective memory in the installation is critical. Collective memories are shared experiences held by a community. By filtering these memories through AI, the installation questions how machine intelligence can alter, distort, or enhance our recollection and perception of shared histories. The technology does not merely replicate human memory but adds a new dimension to it, suggesting a co-evolution of human and machine understanding.
“Collecting memories of Brno” thus profoundly explores modern identity, memory, and perception. It challenges viewers to reconsider the boundaries between human and machine, the past as remembered and the past as digitally reimagined. It provides a rich ground for discussion on the phenomenology of perception in the age of artificial intelligence, highlighting both the potential and the traps of these emergent synergies.
The exhibition was supported by a grant for excellent study programs of Masaryk University within the project ‘Strengthening the excellence of the Theory of Interactive Media (MA) program (TIM_UP)’, MUNI/ESPRO/0821/2023.