Many cultures consider humanity to be created in the image of god. Our unique ability to reason and generate novel ideas have empowered humans across history to imagine new possibilities and breathe life into both magnificent works of art and significant scientific breakthroughs alike.

With artificial intelligence modeled after the likeness of our own minds, humanity has sought to recreate this unique brilliance. Within just the last year, AI has quickly entered the everyday lexicon of the general public, upending centuries-old notions surrounding the value we place on ourselves as intelligent beings.

Machinations of a Godless Mind is an artist-led group exhibition that seeks to question the human condition of perceiving meaning from and ascribing intent to the actions of these seemingly ‘thinking’ autonomous machines that grow ever more present in our lives.

With the art scene recently forced to contend with paradigm shifting developments such as AI image generators, Machinations of a Godless Mind is a provocation to confront synthetic intelligences and rethink the role of human creativity amongst autonomous generative algorithms in contemporary art.

Curators, producers, writers: jo+kapi (Jo Ho & Kapilan Naidu).

Artists involved: Gaetan Boisson, Chok Si Xuan, jo+Kapi, Carlos Serrano, Nick Sim.

Supported by: National Arts Council Singapore.

Credit for images: Jo Ho

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Simulacra 1.0 is an interactive screen installation that invites viewers to reflect upon their own humanity while in conversation with artificial intelligence. The work presents two instances of a digital homunculus: n infant-like entity that learns, adapts, and develops from interactions with the human it encounters.

As viewers communicate with the installation, the homunculi take on evolving appearances—mimicking and emulating the people who stand before it in an attempt to become more human-like. The entities remember each conversation and commit parts of the viewers’ facial features to memory, assembling themselves into a collage of visages and behaviors learnt from the humans they observe over the course of the exhibition.

The work calls into question the ways through which society is interfacing with rapidly emerging artificially intelligent tools and the sense of human-ness that is often projected onto these systems.

First image on the left taken by Harsha Poojari.

All other images taken by Jo Ho.