JO HO

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.