DïaloG

DïaloG is an urban media art installation developed (in the framework of MindSpaces Starts Horizon2020 collaborative research) by Maurice Benayoun (MoBen/CityU HK) and Refik Anadol (AnalogNative).

In the public space (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain) two “living” entities face each other. They don’t look like the living beings we know. They don’t speak any language we know. They are aliens, strangers, immigrants. Facing each other they gradually mutate. They seem to react to their environment. Even more, it is clear that they are desperately trying to understand each other. In the context of social diversity of L’Hospitalet, the second city of Catalunya, a popular suburb of Barcelona, DïaloG reflects on the difficulty of building a mutual understanding beyond social and cultural differences. The real-time generated creatures have behaviors and appearance affected through AI based on their cultural background, their environment and what they perceive from the “locals” that interfere with their attempt to communicate, to understand each other.

For MindSpaces Kepler’s garden, we’ll connect online, both DïaloG living entities and observe them growing before this “encounter of the 4th kind,” when they will be facing each other. From Refik Anadol’s studio in Los Angeles, and Maurice Benayoun’s Neuro Design Lab in CityU Hong Kong we’ll see them growing, moving, and expressing their condition and their desires. DïaloG uses technologies developed by MindSpaces partners to allow a large spectrum of perceptive features that, combined with R. Anadol and M. Benayoun graphic generators and AI algorithms, create this empathic disalienation.