Multitude & singularity

Two notions that gained currency with the start of the new millennium are the multitude – the crowd made up of people connected with each other via networks

– and technological singularity – the idea that machines will eventually become superior to human beings. In fact, the notions of multitude and singularity can be applied to both human beings and technologies. When we think of the multitude, we imagine our democratic commitments converging on social media, but we could just as well use the term to refer to the mass of data fed to the AI programs that are currently the focus of everyone’s attention.

The singularity that concerns us is the online identities or profiles we are constantly tweaking, when we should be devoting as much attention to the concept of technological singularity, which raises questions about our relationship with the machines on which we are becoming increasingly dependent. The artworks assembled in the exhibition Multitude & Singularity reflect the complexity of the world in its digital guise.

*The Singularity: it is by definition what is located on the side of the unique, the specific; it also designates the promise that the intelligence of machines exceeds that of man... Reality or Science Fiction?

Picture : Stine Deja & Marie Munk, Synthetic Seduction: Foreigner. Séquence en trois dimensions, 5'10.