Beyond the Human

Stefan Niederwieser

Civa takes a critical look at how intelligence is constructed. Why do you steer clear of the term “artificial intelligence”?

Djamila Grandits 

Artificial intelligence is often reduced to tools like ChatGPT. We want to broaden the scope and examine the underlying concept of intelligence. This quickly leads to the question of what intelligence actually is—and, by extension, what knowledge entails. For a long time, these concepts have been organized hierarchically: distinguishing between what is considered worth knowing and what is not, and between disciplines and skills. Yet intelligence and knowledge can also be understood differently—as something that emerges symbiotically and is stored within networks or organisms.

Eva Fischer 

Philosophical and scientific theories show that knowledge extends beyond the human. The Gaia hypothesis, for example, conceives of planet Earth as a single organism in which everything is connected. This perspective breaks with the anthropocentric worldview that places humans at the center and assumes that only they are capable of producing intelligence. At Civa, we seek to explore symbiotic networks and examine how artists engage with them. In recent years, significant artistic research has emerged in this field.

Stefan Niederwieser

For example, the work of Claudia Larcher, recipient of the Austrian Art Prize. Her short film was shown at the Civa opening in early October 2024.

Eva Fischer 

Claudia Larcher is working on an ongoing project that uses AI to alter iconic images from art history. Faces read as male were meant to be replaced with those perceived as female or gender-diverse. What’s particularly fascinating is how complex the process turns out to be. The AI, for instance, adds images of handbags or babies whenever it detects a female association. This suggests that it was trained on data that reproduces social bias. It raises questions: How do such biases enter the data? And who is actually storing knowledge? Larcher’s short film represents the culmination of years of artistic research.