Diemut Strebe discusses her new installation 'El Turco' at Aichi Triennale

The artist goes on to tell us about the steps that led to the creation of El Turco. She says, “For The Prayer I employed GPT-2 which used transformer technology for language processing, very different from anything that has been done before. But it was difficult to use because it had a high failure rate.” Despite its shortcomings, however, her interaction with this processing system sparked curiosity about the structures of language and dialogue, and how it can be used to measure and understand intelligence.

When GPT-3 came out with boosted resolution and improved data interaction tools, the artist was inspired to think up new ways to interact with the machine. This train of thought eventually led her to El Turco. The name is inspired by The Turk, a hoax chess-playing automaton created by Hungarian author and inventor Wolfgang Von Kempelen in the 18^th century. In El Turco, the machine’s character is named Von Kempelen and the character played by a human is named Socrates. Socrates takes up a line of questioning to engage Von Kempelen, taking inspiration from Theaetetus, a discourse by Plato that contemplates the human condition, and our notions of knowledge and intelligence.

For this project, Strebe was assisted by Steve DiPaola, a scientist who focuses on developing language and drawing systems. She says, “I used his systems for my artwork which allowed me to design the characters the way I wanted it. I wanted something which was very strong in expression but in no way illustrative, and also far removed from the comic style.” The outcome is a simple sketch-style portrait in basic colours. Strebe’s artworks are elevated by their concept and the wonder it generates, and do not lean on visual or aesthetic ideals the way most artists do. In fact, the bare-bones aesthetic of her oeuvre is what allows a deeper inspection of the technology and philosophy.

The GPT-3 model mathematically generates probability distribution to predict the next word, which is how it mimics understanding. The artist says, “Sometimes it can fail subtly and sometimes drastically but it always fails. I think the media glorifies this as artificial intelligence, but my artwork takes a certain stance toward this type of mystification which doesn't show us really where we stand with AI.” Although Strebe’s practice venerates technology and its prodigal child artificial intelligence, the artist is clear on its current limitations. El Turco is an articulation of the long distance that technology must tread in order to recreate real human intelligence.

In El Turco, the two characters explore a wide range of topics from the Turing Test to current socio-political issues and also art. The human avatar persistently questions the AI avatar, to explore the high and low points of the machine’s processing abilities. Strebe laughs as she says, “To me one of the best dialogues is about Marina Abramovic, regarding The Artist Is Present (performed in MoMA in 2010). She had been a major artist for a long time, but I always thought her strongest work was during her collaboration with Ulay, and this performance can be seen as absolutely critical. When Socrates brings it up, Von Kempelen comes up with mainstream responses instead of displaying any causal understanding of relationships in art, so it actually shows that he (the machine) doesn't understand what he is saying at all.”

El Turco is currently on view at the Aichi Triennale until October 2022.