Machine learns to write a curatorial statement
AI is curating now, which sounds bad for curators who’ve spent lifetimes hoofing it to art openings and studio visits—until you read the Art Newspaper report and realize that this isn’t so much a transformative concept as a one-off novelty project to make art ~TeChiEr~ by simply funneling it through technology.
The Bucharest Biennale has elected the Vienna-based digital marketing agency Spinnwerk to generate a brief concept, gather data from galleries and art institutions, and then select the appropriate participants. Seems like a raw deal for the curators who compiled all that information for the learning data. The biennial is set to take place online in October, with VR headsets in Bucharest and Vienna. Spinnwerk founder Razvan Ion tells the Art Newspaper: “People will react and feel completely different after experiencing our immersive narrative.”
“A better idea would have been to commission an artist who works with AI to do the curating,” art critic and net art curator Paddy Johnson wrote via Facebook. “AI needs to be more than a sorting algorithm to work,” she added. “Personally, I’d like to see ELIZA, a chatbot developed in the 1960’s, interview the biennial’s leadership.”
Plus, nobody wants to hang out with a robot at the after-party.
