Exhibition explores not so artificial intelligence

Now Trevor Jones has spent a year creating a ground-breaking, immersive exhibition in Edinburgh which promises to be unlike anything the art world has ever seen.

For one week only, starting today, Leith’s historic Custom House will be transformed into a fantastical space where traditional art forms such as oil painting, stained glass and sculpture are fused with surveillance cameras, facial recognition and live AI video to explore how technology has absorbed and repurposed the role of the divine.

It will include giant AI animated paintings that evolve in real time, an artificial intelligence entity called LOGOS that learns and reacts to viewers and The Sacaramemes – seven oil paintings that watch you as you watch them.

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Then there are the Eyes of LOGOS, interactive installations that follow, recognise and even call you by name along with an immersive rewards system, where visitors unlock exclusive digital and physical gifts via the specially constructed EXPOS3D app.

Originally from Canada, Jones studied at Edinburgh College of Art and, after initially struggled to make a living, has become a globally acclaimed artist known for fusing classical oil painting with emerging technologies to explore power, perception and human agency in the digital age.

His success has enabled him to take his art even further into the future and explore how it is likely to evolve with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies in this bold new exhibition.

“Where once people turned to God for answers, we now turn to machines,” he said. “Algorithms have inherited the attributes of omniscience, omnipresence and judgement, quietly reshaping our sense of identity, privacy and control.

“The exhibition holds a mirror up to modern power structures, from religious dogma to state surveillance and corporate data mining. As the roots of faith weaken, we must confront what has been lost, what has been gained and what it means for our future.”

He added: “This is not an attack on tradition. It’s an observation of how much our world has changed.”

Jones told the Sunday National that he had been exploring the collaboration between traditional art, fine art, painting and technology for the past 15 years and the new exhibition was a natural progression.

“The world is changing so fast with technology and AI that it’s quite scary or exciting, depending which way you look at it – whether AI saves the world or kills us all, we don’t know,” he said.

The three themes of his new exhibition are surveillance – where the omnipresent gaze of technology monitors, predicts and controls, faith – looking at the shift from religious and cultural traditions toward new digital dependencies and rebellion – examining the human instinct to resist, question and reclaim freedom in the face of control.

Jones said he was looking at whether human beings still have personal agency and what we might be losing by integrating technology so much into our lives that it replaces all the things that made us who we are, as a society and as a civilisation.

“I am exploring things I think are important because I see it as the future of art,” he said.

“The younger generation are glued to their phones, they need screens, they need to be engaged. They need to be constantly interacting with them, therefore interactive artwork is going to take over in the future – artwork that is immersive.”

Jones believes that years from now there will still be paintings, museums and traditional artists but these will be superseded to a certain extent by huge galleries that are completely immersive, virtual reality experiences where people can connect with virtual visitors from all over the world.

Although Jones has used AI to create the new exhibition, he doesn’t believe AI will replace artists altogether.

“I think it will mean there’s going to be a lot of crap online, but there will be artists who generally are visionary with great ideas, who will be able to use AI as a tool to create things that have never been seen before,” he said.

However, he is concerned that people are losing the ability to take time out and appreciate what is around them.

“Technology has moved so fast and we now have this culture where everything is clicks and fast paced,” said Jones.

“The younger generation struggle to go into a gallery and spend time with artwork and look at a painting for any longer than 10 seconds, and that’s been a problem for years.”

It is this increasing dependence on mobile phones that gave him the idea to incorporate technology into his art to see if he could engage people for a longer period of time.

“That’s why I’ve been playing with technology – people can scan my painting and see an animation with augmented reality or scan the QR code to get more information on their phone,” Jones explained. “Although it takes away from the painting itself my thesis is that it will actually make them think about the artwork more and bring them back to the painting.

“That’s kind of what I’m doing with this exhibition as well, so there’s going to be an app and people will walk through the entire exhibition with their phone, engaging with all the artwork.”

He is not the only artist working in the digital world but feels some are so engrossed in how they can use technology that they are disconnecting from humanity.

“Good art, I believe, is always human-centric,” Jones said. “It’s driven by an understanding of who we are and where we came from and I think a lot of that is missing in in digital art these days. There’s no emotion there.

“So again, what I’m trying to do with this exhibition, is bring the human back into artwork but using highly innovative technology to create a message that’s very original.

“I’ve not seen anything like this – I’ve been looking but I think what I learned is that nobody’s crazy enough except me!”

EXPOS3D runs until Saturday at Custom House in Leith