Valentin Ruhry. ELIZA

On one hand, the artist is interested in the space of the Arsenal Gallery, loaded with luggage from a long history of exhibitions, on the other hand – the Internet understood as the dominant utopia of our time, generating socio-cultural processes of change, that affect many aspects of our lives. The artist focuses on the subject of decentralization – an integral component of the world confronted with global networking, analysis of people, products and data through digital media and social networks. An important aspect of Ruhry’s work is a broadly understood element of designing and controlling one’s life, as well as relations between the human and technology.
 
The starting point for this exhibition are writings by Joseph Weizenbaum – professor of computer science at MIT and “father” of artificial intelligence, especially his famous book Computer Power and Human Reason. The work written in 1976, today is considered as an early critique on computer technology and the Internet, their impact on society, changes in interpersonal relationships, and even in the human brain. The book was written many years before the appearance of the Internet, artificial intelligence, robots and the automatization of everyday life. Originally, it functioned at the intersection of humanities and natural sciences. In 1964, Weizenbaum created Eliza – “grandmother” of Chat-Bots such as Siri and Alexa. The title of the exhibition is taken from the Eliza program, which for the first time made possible a conversation between man and computer.