Science and Innovation

Artificial intelligence is more evident than ever in our daily lives. In the midst of the irruption of this technology, Lluís Nacenta has curated the exhibition AI: Artificial Intelligence, which until 17 March can be visited at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). With a multidisciplinary profile that combines music, mathematics, research and writing, Nacenta has also been one of the curators of the last City and Science Biennial and director of Hangar, Centre for Artistic Production and Research, until 2021, coinciding with one of the artistic residencies of the Collide Award. We have a conversation with him about art, science and technology, and the impact of AI in today’s world.

You are a mathematician, musician, doctor in humanities… You have a very multifaceted profile. How would you define yourself?

The truth is that I find it difficult to define myself professionally, because what I do doesn’t fit into the disciplinary subdivisions. I can answer by listing the things I do on a daily basis. One is writing articles. Another is writing computational music, that is to say that the music and mathematics strands are together in my day-to-day life, I mean I don’t do mathematics for its own sake, but as a means of producing algorithmic music. I also teach some classes at Bau and ESMUC, specifically, and I curate cultural programmes and exhibitions.

If you had to summarise?

The short version would be that I’m a curator, because that’s my main occupation at the moment.

Where does your interest in the link between art, science and technology stem from?

My personal interest in this link has always existed. I think many of us can remember the moment, usually in high school, when you are forced to decide between science and literature. I made a mess of things at that time and I was not able to decide. And now, I know that I will never make this decision: I deny the relevance of the question.

So, should this interaction be encouraged?

In fact, I don’t think it is necessary to connect art, science and technology, per se; I think what we need to do is to deactivate the artificial separations that intellectual and professional contexts impose between these fields of practice and knowledge. In the everyday lives of people who create and research, these fields are deeply interconnected. I think it is more a question of making these interconnections, usually hidden or inhibited, visible and asserting them.

Do art and science share interests?

Artists are interested in everything and everything challenges them, and scientists do the same. What part of the universe or of life is excluded from the scientific ambition to know? None! It is often said that the difference lies in the languages… but is this true? There is no such thing as artistic language. Artistic is any language that the artist considers pertinent to use in a particular piece.

And what is the language of science?

It is not true that it is exclusively mathematical language. Scientific papers are full of words and graphs, not just numbers and formulas. It is also often said that the difference lies in the methodologies. But, again, the artistic methodology is by no means fixed or closed. And the scientific method, while defining scientific activity, does not exhaust all science. Scientific work depends heavily on personal intuitions and inclinations and on cultural biases and political and economic circumstances, like all other human activities. The history of science illustrates this very clearly. Science is not produced and advanced by the systematic application of the scientific method alone: this is only part of the story. Where, then, is the distinction, the distinction that seems so profound and substantial? Perhaps, ultimately, it is only an academic and professional distinction, which is not as essential as we tend to believe.

As a curator, you were in charge of the art and science part of the last City and Science Biennial. How did you live that experience?

The City and Science Biennial was a difficult challenge, because we had the courage to cross contexts, practices and languages that are usually separated. In the art and science part, we made the effort to broaden the framework of the people who are usually interested in this confluence. We wanted to question the scientific community with artistic proposals, and to invite the public to share scientific knowledge through art, beyond specialised languages. The challenge was enormous and the result was very positive.

Several challenges we faced were put on the table: Is science the key to overcoming them?

I think one of the lessons we can learn from the covid-19 pandemic, for example, is that the scientific response is not sufficient to deal with global crises. For example, the impact of confinement (dictated exclusively by epidemiology) on the mental health of children and young people has been brutal. It seems clear to me that a more holistic and interdisciplinary response was needed.

What about longer-term challenges, such as global warming?

In the case of the climate crisis, the situation is not very different. Science has provided us with a fairly clear diagnosis and forecasts. We know what to do in order not to bring our planet to climate collapse. We know because the science is very clear. So, what is the collective response? Basically, push a little harder on the accelerator that is pushing us into the abyss, as evidenced by the fact that in 2023 we emitted globally more CO2 into the atmosphere than in 2022. Again, scientific evidence is not enough. That is not how we humans work. Something more is needed.

For three years, Barcelona, together with CERN in Geneva, hosted the Premi Collide artistic residency. Two of the prize-winning artistic collectives did their residency at Hangar, which you directed.

Yes, it was a very good opportunity to give continuity and reinforce initiatives of confluence of artistic and scientific knowledge that were already taking place in Barcelona.

How did you experience the reception of the residents and their projects that brought together concepts as complex to conceive as particle physics with art?

We learned specific things and general methodologies from Mònica Bello’s team at Arts at CERN. And in Hangar we were able to respond to the challenge of working with particle physics, thanks to the previous experience of so many years making artistic works connected to science and technology. After all, particle physics is a cosmology, a vision of the universe and the world. For example, it is a view of time. From this perspective, the focus is broadened, beyond difficult-to-understand quantum effects, and the debate and space for shared knowledge is opened up.

AI is at the most popular point in its history, and now is the right time for an exhibition?

I don’t know if it was the right time, because it is very difficult to explain in an exhibition a ubiquitous and constantly accelerating phenomenon, but it was necessary to do so. It was necessary to put this technology in context, to inform about its inner workings, its conditions of possibility and its impact on the most diverse aspects of our society. And the task undoubtedly continues. The day after we close the exhibition at the CCCB, we will have to continue opening up this technology, explaining it and questioning it.

In just a few years, AI has completely permeated our lives. Are we in the midst of a boom, or has it only just begun?

This is what technologists tell us, that AI will be increasingly present in our lives. It has been around for some time now, in fact. Most of us use multiple AI applications every day, whether we are aware of it or not, and not only from our digital devices, but also when we go shopping, take public transport or go to the doctor. And everything seems to indicate that, indeed, this has only just begun.

And where is it leading us?

I would like to appeal once again to our collective responsibility in the face of contemporary challenges. AI comes at a high cost in terms of energy, mineral resources and water. That is why the path of more and more people using it, and for more and more areas of their personal and professional lives, seems to me frankly irresponsible. AI is an extraordinarily useful and powerful technology in some fields (in scientific research, for example). I know this may sound strange in the fast-paced, accelerationist context in which we live, but I think we should learn to develop and use AI only when it is really useful and necessary.

In December, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center inaugurated the MareNostrum 5, a supercomputer that will enable the expansion of AI knowledge and technologies. Has supercomputing been the technology that has enabled AI to make a qualitative leap forward and revolutionise the world?

It certainly has. The fundamental principles of machine learning and neural networks are not new. Their origins date back to the 1950s. It has been the increase in computing power (driven in large part, interestingly, by the world of video games) that has made possible the spectacular development of AI in recent years. AI relies heavily on data and computational power. Without the data society (think of the vast amount of data that each of us generates on a daily basis) and supercomputing (which has made possible famous applications such as ChatGPT), we would not be witnessing this spectacular explosion of AI.

Are we as a society adapting to this change?

This is a very difficult question. Human society is very flexible and has a great capacity to adapt to change and to forget. We get used to wearing the mask everywhere just as easily as we turned the page on the pandemic, once the restrictions were lifted (who remembers today the concept of the “new normal”?). In this sense, I think that society adapts to whatever is necessary, with a ductility and resignation that I do not know whether to describe as admirable or terrifying. The problem lies in whether this adaptation can be consensual, informed and critical: will we be able to adapt to the irruption of AI in the most varied aspects of our lives in a way that is not obedient, unthinking and gregarious? I am afraid there are reasons to doubt it…

The exhibition at the CCCB dates the beginnings of AI back to the 1800s, with ideas reflected in works such as Frankenstein. Since then, AI has sparked a lot of ideas and stories that have permeated the culture at large. Do you consider these imaginaries as transcendent points for the progress of this technology?

Without a doubt, AI is the latest manifestation of an ancient dream, the dream of creating life artificially. Again, this is an aspect of life where art, science and technology should come much closer together than they usually do. It is necessary that the current development of AI should be strongly imbued with the historical knowledge of this ancient desire to create our artificial alter ego. Our collective attitude towards this technological transformation is deeply shaped by cultural and historical facts, and it is very important that these conditioning factors are not buried in the collective unconscious, but that we bring them to the table to illuminate the debate on the development and use of AI, which is currently dominated by opportunistic and short-sighted technological and economic narratives.

In the face of the new tools of generative AI and those to come, where do you think art and the role of the artist is moving towards?

Art has a fundamental role in understanding each new technology. The artist doesn’t just use the technology, but interrogates it, and interrogates the world that has made it possible. Art could be defined as a kind of fundamental science of establishing meaning. It is our first tool in looking around us and trying to understand the world. Science comes later, and tries to systematise and make reproducible in controlled environments those things that art has seemed to understand in an encompassing but fleeting way, and in no case generalised or generalisable. It seems that the crises we are currently experiencing could worsen in the near future. If this is the case, the role of artists will have to become more and more important. We need them! Not to make us pass the pains, but to see something clearer.

And how do you see the future of AI?

It is very difficult to say. At times it is clear to me that we are heading towards a future of widespread, indiscriminate and obedient use of ubiquitous technology, developed and exploited by private companies and terribly expensive in terms of energy and natural resources. If things go this way, the only hope is that it will be a very brief future, so unsustainable. At other times I need to believe that, by some unimaginable cataclysm or (hopefully!) by a stroke of genius of collective intelligence, we will be able to straighten the path. And righting the path will mean, in the case of AI, making transparent, open source and consensual use of this amazing and powerful technology, and doing so only in those cases (of which there may thankfully be many!) where the collective benefits outweigh the overall costs.