We find ourselves increasingly uncertain of what is real and what is generated by artificial intelligence (AI). This resonates as real birdsong is slowly taken over by machine-generated song in Machine Auguries, an exhibition of the work of multidisciplinary artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. Curated by WASP-HS Guest Professor Sarah Cook, the exhibition is underway at Bildmuseet in Umeå until April 6, 2025.
With the rapid advance of artificial intelligence AI-generated images, videos and sound are increasingly hard to spot. Closely mimicking reality, they raise many potential risks. Machine Auguries highlights the blurring of artifice and reality with her AI-generated dawn chorus, playing under an artificial sky.
“Machine Auguries, as a work of art, gets us to question all kinds of concerns about AI systems and their use in the world,” says WASP-HS Guest Professor Sarah Cook.
Cook continues by giving an example: “If you play the AI-generated robin song from the exhibition to an app that uses AI to identify birds, it will confirm, ‘Yes, that’s a robin singing.’”
This, she warns, could have real-world consequences: “But these are taken out of context. A real robin might be misled, wasting energy searching for an artificial mate, or flee from a danger signal. We can’t truly understand the meaning of that call.”
Just like the robin in Cook’s example, humans may interact with and consume, AI-generated content without being aware of it, possibly being misled about what is real and not.
Art as a Tool to Understand Human Experience and AI
As curator of Machine Auguries, Cook emphasizes the importance of working together with artists to better understand AI’s impact on our lives.
“Artists are often researchers. Their experimental processes—investigating, creating, testing, and seeking feedback—mirror other forms of research. The artists I work with offer fresh perspectives on the relationship between society and technology,” Cook says.
She explains that in making Machine Auguries, artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg worked with scientists from different disciplines—ecology to theoretical physics—and did her own research collating this information to create the immersive experience in the gallery at Bildmuseet.
“Ginsberg is addressing questions about why we might choose to value the artificial over the real, and her artwork seeks to raise awareness about the choices we make—to protect nature or to allow technological developments to continue unchecked in their environmental impact, or even to think that technology could fix nature.”
“Maybe it can, and that’s why we need artists to be part of such research projects, to ask the questions of value, and human experience, that their art seeks to engage with,” she adds.
More About Machine Auguries
Machine Auguries, is the first of two exhibitions at Bildmuseet exploring AI’s role in our future. The exhibition is running until April 6, 2025, and on 12th January 2025, a site-specific Umeå chorus will premiere. Working with local sound recordists, ornithologists, and sound archives, Ginsberg has collated field recordings of bird species iconic to the location. Two previous chrouses created for London, UK, and Toledo, Ohio, USA, respectively, are already on show at Bildmuseet.
Upcoming events related to the exhibition:
Art in the Rise of AI – Jan 26, 14:00: Daniel Shanken, artist and WASP-HS postdoctoral fellow
Avifauna in Umeå Over 50 Years – Feb 9, 14:00: Ornithologist Christer Olsson
Living by the Light – Feb 23, 14:00: Katharina Wulff, chronobiology expert
Read more about Machine Auguries.
More About Art and AI
To read more about Sarah Cook’s research project and the project members, see Art and AI.