Calendar

Venue:
Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
Otto-Behaghel-Straße 10
35394 Gießen


Smart systems seem to be possessed by daemons: In computer science, a "daemon" refers to a background process that operates without direct user control. On the one hand, the term refers to the opacity and apparent autonomy of digital systems. On the other hand, the terminological transfer of the demonic to technical media opens up a historical and epistemic perspective: the daemon becomes a figure of thought that can be used to reflect, metaphorise and historically situate current ideas about AI. Based on this technical attribution, the lecture examines the demon as a central figure at the interface of art and technology - exemplified by Agnieszka Polska's video work "The Demon's Brain" (2019). This work shows how the idea of machine intelligence developed from the interweaving of brain and computer metaphors and has since been closely linked to reflections on the demonic. This idea is based on a double movement: the explanation of the human mind by the computer and the transfer of cognitive processes to technical systems. However, this constellation proves to be less a realisation of "intelligence" than a metaphorical projection that mystifies the processes of data aggregation and pattern recognition as a movement of thought. Polska's work translates this problematic into an aesthetic form in which the figure of the demon simultaneously reflects the political, ecological and economic infrastructures of the digital and embeds them in the prehistory of technocapitalism. In this way, the demonic visualises the fundamental ambivalence of smart digital technologies - between control and powerlessness, glorification and transfiguration.