Our deepening engagement with technology is a subject of great fascination for artists and continues to inspire many intriguing responses from practitioners across disciplines. The American artist WangShui is among the many creatives who grapple with this broad topic and is currently showing their first European show at Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany. The solo exhibition, titled Window of Tolerance, is running from September 8, 2023 - March 10, 2024, and is curated by Sarah Johanna Theurer, Curator at Haus der Kunst and Teresa Retzer, Associate Curator at Haus der Kunst. Window of Tolerance engages video, sculpture art and painting to present visions of a reality wherein the line between human beings and artificial intelligence (AI) is blurred. Its centrepiece is Certainty of the Flesh, a video artwork featuring AI actors that unfolds in real-time. The actors interact with each other through a fluid melding of their bodies, suggesting an all-too-human desire for intimacy. Theurer joins STIR to explore the large-scale installation's articulation of technology and the literary inspiration behind it.

Theurer and WangShui view Certainty of the Flesh as a reality TV show that invites us to look at the entertainment format as a form of storytelling, akin to the mythmaking that underpins classical tales. The code art piece offers its audience a voyeuristic look into the private interactions of AI protagonists, who project our drives just like reality TV stars do. In essence, both parties are human archetypes. Within Certainty of the Flesh’s framework, technology plays a role similar to the magic of speculative worldbuilding at the heart of these archetypes’ interactions in cultural myths. Put simply, technology is to be treated as a vehicle for self-representation here.

As Theurer tells STIR, “Technology as a form of self-representation—as an extension of self—is not new. It is a universal practice that dates back thousands of years.” She points out that several paradigmatic characters appear throughout various religious stories and folktales, which suggests that the human motivations that birthed these archetypes have also been largely consistent. Technology, interchangeable with magic, is the device that enables this representation and does so through various means. Theurer presents divine incarnation as an example, in so much that it is a recurring device across mythological stories. She says, “Avatars used to be something just for gods, but they are no longer. They have moved and morphed through formats such as myth and science fiction, and their corresponding belief systems, which are very different.”

The video art piece takes its title from power over physical bodies exhibited by the Oankali, an alien species that appears within the iconic Xenogenesis trilogy by American science fiction author Octavia Butler. Dawn (1987), the first book in the series, introduced the aliens as saviours of humankind, following the nuclear apocalypse, who in exchange for our salvation, wish to merge with us, mutating each other’s physiologies forever in the process. Butler’s visionary series has been a subject of inspiration for other contemporary artists such as the Otolith Group, a collective of artists, curators and art theorists who recently concluded touring an art exhibition that shared its title with the trilogy.

Butler’s work captivates artists not only for its imaginative depictions of alien life but also for the author’s articulations of technology. As Theurer explains, “Butler believed that technologies embody the social and political relations and power dynamics of the people who built them.” The art curator treats the Oankali’s biological ability as an extension of technology within the author’s narrative and as evidence of her desire to imagine an alternative technological state that is inherently inclusive. This perspective is driven by the aliens’ vast technological superiority over us, along with their shifting physiologies, which are hybridised by the many other lifeforms they have merged with. WangShui shares Butler’s vision, as the curator highlights, harkening back to the video. She draws a link between the Oankali and the physiologies of WangShui’s protagonists, telling STIR, “(I believe) this is why it is important to them that the bodies of the humanoid characters in the simulation are genderless and constantly morphing.”

Theurer describes the current buzz around machine learning in art and technology as a “gold rush” of sorts, wherein aesthetic sensibilities are often guided by what we wish to see, which in turn is defined by the realities we wish to project. Certainty of the Flesh is underlined by this belief, and through the shifting physiologies and interactions of its characters, leaves audiences imagining realities, both projected and actual, that are far more complex than we take for granted.