A Forest, 2019
A Forest is part of a project on contemporary infrastructures Max de Esteban has been developing since 2016. This work researches Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the ideological frameworks in which it operates. He is not interested in the technology itself but rather in its social effects. Max de Esteban leaves the question of whether the recorded forest the voice that accompanies it are "real" or have been composed by AI programs open with a monologue in which the head of one of the largest investment funds in artificial intelligence startups asks us if what we are seeing is real. The video wanders through the forest aimlessly and without an established path. It is winter, and the landscape, engulfed in fog, features nothing but barren and rhizomatic vegetation. This fog and the labyrinthine structure of the forest are reminiscent of our inability to predict where the use of artificial intelligence will take us. What are the ideologies of those who invest in these technologies? What social values are at stake? This seems to be the true Leviathan in Max de Esteban's forest.
Technical details
- Original title:
- A Forest
- Registration number:
- 5916
- Artist:
- Esteban, Max de
- Date created:
- 2019
- Date acquired:
- 2020
- Status:
- On display
- Fonds:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium
- Object type:
- Audiovisual recording
- Media:
- Single-channel video, colour, sound, 23 min 18 s
- Edition number:
- Ed. 3/7
- Credits:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium
- Copyright:
- © Max de Esteban
- It has accessibility resources:
- No
The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.
For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.
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