NEWS Artists Zeno Gries and Florian Model were supported through the TAIGA (Centre for Transdisciplinary AI) microproject fund to undertake artists residencies at UmArts in 2024 and 2025. Their new artworks are featured in Bildmuseet’s exhibition AI and the Paradox of Agency opening on 13 March, curated by UmArts/WASP-HS Guest Professor Sarah Cook and Museum Director Katarina Pierre.
Gravity will take us all by Zeno Gries
Image[Fotograf saknas]AI and the Paradox of Agency runs from 13 March 2026 until 17 January 2027, featuring Florian Model’s new work Purposeless Abundance (2005). This video/machinima work presents a world where artificially intelligent agents don’t really have anything to do. This is a different way of modelling behaviour, which is different to how AI is often modelled on specific tasks and ideas of success. Florian Model’s random agents do still learn distinct behaviours, which are different to highly-goal oriented forms of agency. The work raises questions about intrinsic motivation, the pleasure or engagement users feel when they are randomly rewarded with new content, and the boredom and disconnect they feel when they are not.
As part of the exhibition, Zeno Gries’ Gravity Will Take Us All (2025) will be screening at the dome cinema of Curiosum every Saturday and Sunday at 16.00. This immersive film uses original audio recordings of Norbert Wiener and AI recreations of his voice, with music by Carl Michael von Hausswolff. The work explores the relationship between human and artificial agency. Wiener’s voice narrates drone footage of Stockholm, reflecting on how creating simplified models of behaviour, necessary for programming AI agents, differs from the complexity of human life. By combining real material with AI-generated audio, the film calls into question the reliability of technologies that fill gaps in our understanding.
Read more at Bildmuseets website.