Fold Me, Bend Me, Break Me, Said the Computer (2024)

Kristensen and Walker report artistic R&D with The New Real that explores how an audience can become enfolded through immersion and interaction, and conversely how the 'black box' of AI can be unfolded by going inside it.
When we fold something, the fold divides, separates and multiplies what is folded at the same time as it connects sides, reveals and hides. Folding is thus a contradictory act, simultaneously deleting and opening up. This concept has been applied to AI and intelligence more broadly. This talk will use the fold as a starting point to zoom out, providing a way of understanding language, labour, productivity and agency. Then it will zoom back in to focus specifically on artistic practice, and performance in particular, as a means of unfolding complex concepts and structures such as AI.
Kristensen and Walker believe AI can be inspirational and not only instrumental, through approaches such as Surrealism. Their creative practice reimagines interactions between humans and machines, and questions the role of language, classification and measurement that underlie our contemporary reality. They illustrate the transformative difference between viewing the 'black box' of AI from outside, and journeying inside it.