When We Cease to Understand the World (Extraterrestrials and AI on the Couch)

When We Cease to Understand the World (Extraterrestrials and AI on the Couch)
Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown, we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding’.   - Werner Heisenberg

BravinLee Programs is pleased to present a series from Martin Wilner’s ongoing project, The Case Histories, related to his work with the space scientists and artists of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute during his artist residency in 2015-16. This is exciting and especially timely, as advances in space science technology and artificial intelligence are leading humanity into a radical reimagining of our place in the cosmos and redefining the meaning of consciousness.

Following this trail, emanating from his experiences with the SETI scientists, Wilner invited CHAT-GPT4 to participate as a subject in The Case Histories. We are very pleased to include this important and groundbreaking artwork in the exhibition.

The Case Histories is a continuation of his existential and idiosyncratic time-based artist’s practice, begun in 2002 with his decade-long Making History series. These double-sided works deploy the framework of the Gregorian calendar as a means of incorporating the passage of time into the work itself. As Philippe Ducat noted in artpress April 2019, “It is a grid that could have been that of an imaginary artist in Vie Mode d’Emploi by George Perec. The result is astounding.”

After developing a vocabulary that incorporated portraiture, caricature, comics, typography, micrography, cartography, and musical code, in 2012 he made a dramatic departure in transforming a self-analytic process into an analytic one. He began inviting a subject each month to send him messages daily via email, text, or phone, which became the basis of his daily drawing practice. The relationship that developed over the course of each month became an opportunity to create a portrait of the state of mind of his subject as well as a reflection of the relationship between artist and subject.

Wilner applied for an artist residency at the SETI Institute wishing to push the question of mind in art into the arena of contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life. While many considerations about such contact have been contemplated, little consideration has been given to how the psychodynamics of relationships would shape the form and success of such contact. He proposed working with a group of the Institute’s scientists in areas of expertise ranging from the interpretation of microwave signals from space, tracking the trajectory of meteor showers, studying evidence of Earth-like exoplanets, astrophysics, astrobiology, planetary protection, and a voyage to Pluto and beyond. He invited them to participate in his work process with the purpose of seeing what form of relationship would develop with scientists studying the heavens and whether it could it be extrapolated to the extraterrestrial life whose existence they explored. These works represent the results of an inquiry which continues to evolve, posing additional questions about the nature of consciousness.

Space scientist Seth Shostak planted perhaps the first seed of curiosity in Wilner’s mind about artificial intelligence, at least since his watching of The Terminator film series. Shostak predicted that first contact would not occur with biological intelligence, but with an artificial one created on a distant exoplanet, far more ancient in origin than Earth and therefore having gone through its technological development hundreds of millions of years ago. The next step in this sequence was working with astrophysicist Laurance Doyle, whose pioneering research on cetaceans demonstrated to an uneasy scientific world that whales have all the components of syntax necessary for language and complex communication. The idea that we are not alone has recently resulted in Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) that utilizes artificial intelligence to facilitate communication with other forms of biological life on our own planet. And of course, artificial intelligence is already escalating our capacity to study a vast array of signals from deep space.

As Werner Heisenberg notes above, these radical developments in space science and artificial intelligence necessitate a reexamination of many accepted notions. Of particular interest to Wilner is the question of the nature of consciousness. While much has been written about this topic in the scientific and technological community, most of it limiting if not denying the potential of nonbiological consciousness, little attention has been paid by those who study consciousness as a continual part of their clinical practices: psychoanalysts. While there have been attempts at creating machine-delivered therapies going back to the 1960s ELIZA program, less attention has been paid to what constitutes consciousness.

Along with a number of gallery solo exhibitions, works from The Case Histories have been presented as a solo exhibition at the Freud Museum, London.

Wilner grew up in New York City and is essentially self-taught as an artist. His academic background includes a Concentration in English literature as an undergraduate at Columbia College, medicine at New York University, psychiatry at the Payne Whitney Clinic/Weill Cornell Medical College, and a Scholar in Psychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Wilner has exhibited widely and has had numerous one-person gallery exhibitions with Sperone Westwater, NYC; Hales Gallery, London; Pierogi, NYC; and Galerie Jean Brolly, Paris.

His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions internationally including ones at the Morgan Library and Museum; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College; University Art Museum, University at Albany, State University of New York; Fundacion Banco Santander, Madrid, Spain; and Casa Roberto Marinha, Rio Di Janeiro, Brazil. His work has been published extensively and is in many prominent collections including those of the Whitney Museum, the Morgan Library Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum, New York, The Pennsylvania Academy of Art and the Vassar Art Library.