Artist Anicka Yi on Creating Her Immortal AI Twin
[NOTE: We sent the wrong RSVP link for Cathy Hackl in the newsletter here is the correct link: https://lu.ma/aw_cathy_hackl ]
Artwrld editor-at-large Andrew Goldstein will be hosting a live conversation with the artist Anicka Yi on Zoom this Thursday, October 3rd, at 12:00 PM EST.
RSVP to join the discussion and take part in the community Q&A at the end—this newsletter is meant to help you get up to speed ahead of the talk.
Meet Anicka Yi
The artist Anicka Yi is a human being, but she's not stuck up about it. In fact, she's perhaps most at home collaborating with non-human entities, pushing the boundaries of what art can be and who—or what—can create it.
First, she began working with microbes, famously deploying bacteria to help her make colorfully blooming "paintings" in giant petri dishes. For her 2017 Hugo Boss Prize show at the Guggenheim, she enlisted colonies of ants to activate her works.
More recently, the artist has found a collaborator in AI. In 2021, for her Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern, she used the technology to create an ecosystem of floating robotic “aerobes,” blurring the lines between the organic and the synthetic.
Now, with her new “Emptiness Project,” Yi is taking her experimentation with artificial intelligence a big step further, training it on her years of art-making materials in the hopes of creating an autonomous digital twin that will be able to outlive her—allowing her creative DNA to continue working, and evolving, in a post-human landscape.
So, how should we envision the future of art in world of non-human makers? And how can artists and scientists join forces to create a more flourishing reality? This week, for our fifth live Artwrld conversation, we are pleased to sit down with Anicka Yi to delve into the strange, speculative era to come.
About Artwrld
Artwrld is a disruptive platform for the 21st-century art world. We host live, weekly talks with the people shaping the future of art.
Our mission is to bridge the gap between artists and technologists. We want to foster collaboration, break down barriers, and explore new ideas that challenge conventional definitions of art—while at the same time extending the complex magic of the art world into the new era.
more at: www.artwrld.com
Image credits:
The "aerobes" filling Tate Modern's Turbine Hall for the 2021 Hyundai Commission "In Love With The World." Courtesy of Anicka Yi.
Anicka Yi, Each Branch Of Coral Holds Up The Light Of The Moon (video, detail), 2024. Single channel video, 16:04. Courtesy of the artist, Leeum Museum of Art, and Gladstone Gallery.