Event
Other Intelligences: beyond humans and machines
Sign in for the openingFrom Tuesday to Sunday
Immersive Room, Gallery, Lounge
What do an algorithm and a mushroom have in common? Both process information through distributed networks. Both solve problems without a command center. Both are forms of refined and functional intelligence, though completely different from human intelligence. The difference is that one was designed, the other is the result of evolution.
Other Intelligences, a collective exhibition curated by Sabine Himmelsbach and Marlene Wenger and produced by HEK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) in collaboration with MEET Digital Culture Center, explores forms of cognition different from our own. Systems that perceive, process, and adapt according to logics that do not pass through either a brain or an algorithm. The exhibition avoids cognitive hierarchies, of course. Instead, it analyzes and discovers protocols of relationship: how do we dialogue with those who perceive time differently, those who process through the body rather than the mind, and those who think in colonies rather than as individuals?
A useful operation, not a speculative exercise. Learning from those who have developed distributed, symbiotic, resilient forms of cognition redefines our approach to technology, ecology, and coexistence.
Other Intelligences builds a space where humans, plants, animals, and artificial beings meet, and where art becomes a laboratory for possible relationships between biology, technology, and imagination.
In collaboration with the Consulate General of Switzerland in Milan.
Other intelligences inspire the future
“Other Intelligences is a collective exhibition that cleverly sidesteps the issue by removing humans and machines from the equation. What remains? Nature, about which we generally know little and to which we certainly struggle to attribute forms of alternative intelligence. In reality, any animal or plant organism capable of surviving and proliferating in its own ecosystem is intelligent. It devises collaborative, symbiotic survival strategies. It weaves bonds and relationships that are systematically beneficial to all. We discover that some animal brains are extraordinarily different from the human brain: for example, they are widespread, have peripheral subsidiaries, differentiated functions, and strategic reaction capabilities to build adaptive responses. We discover that plants also communicate with their ecosystem, sending and receiving biological messages. We marvel at the undoubtedly highly intelligent system of actions and reactions that underpins the complexity of the planet and its inhabitants. Our wonder gives rise to a new way of thinking that makes us aware that we are immersed in an ecosystem that holds the wisdom of millennia of evolution. We understand that, in the face of this ignored and often discriminated intelligence, our perspective must become inter-specific.
It is paradoxical, all things considered, that technology, nature’s great antagonist, is a fundamental driver of knowledge, bridging the gap between humans and the environment. Knowing that there are mechanisms in natural cycles that we can imitate and translate to solve the Anthropocene crisis is an unexpected event, once again changing humans’ perception of themselves in the universe. It is an epochal transformation, an opportunity that we must seize. And we are already doing so.
Interdisciplinary collaboration, symbiosis, and systemic strategies are practices that we are learning from nature. New technologies are a fundamental tool because, given the reality of data, observations, and analysis, “other” intelligences are a scientific truth.
In this context, hosting Other Intelligences at MEET is not only a great pleasure, but a necessary acknowledgment of how digital art is an additional and fundamental intelligence. Intuitive, visionary, capable of taking us one step further and offering everyone, indiscriminately, the testimony of a profound and mysterious knowledge. That of other intelligences”.
Maria Grazia Mattei
The public program for Other Intelligences will be available soon.
Our events and workshops are designed for children, teenagers, and adults. They aim to offer a living source of lifelong learning for people of all ages, enabling an open and critical encounter with media art to increase their knowledge and skills in the digital field through discussions and practical experiences.
