A lecture performance about the importance of body, gesture, and diagrams in AI research.

Philipp Schmitt, a MAXmachina artist and former Berggruen Institute fellow embedded in Yann LeCun’s lab at NYU, uncovers surprising elements in the making of machine learning. In a world where most people’s picture of what artificial intelligence is ranges from The Terminator to face recognition, How AI Lost Its Body delves into the imagination of the engineer, the aesthetics of artificial intelligence and gives you access to new ways of picturing AI—that will remain with you long after the curtain bow.

The piece draws from a range of archival material, and the artist’s two-year residency in Yann LeCun’s machine learning research group at New York University. The performance explores how researchers use embodied, situated knowledge in an attempt to separate intelligence from embodiment. It also shows how researchers use diagrams and their imagination to visualize and understand the invisible aspects of AI.

Choreography in collaboration with Sarah Dahnke.

The recording of the overhead camera feed was screened as an essay film at Dortmunder U Cinema by Hartware MedienKunstVerein as part of the exhibition ‘House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm‘.

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