Opening Saturday March 15, 17.00 - 19.30 hrs

Upstream Gallery is pleased to present the group exhibition Ghosts. This exhibition, curated by Anne de Jong, brings together artists who work with artificial intelligence or critically reflect on it. The rapid developments in AI are bringing major changes to society and creative processes. The artists in this exhibition explore both the potential and darker aspects of AI, with a focus on the human presence behind the technology. Its implications are approached through the metaphor of ghosts: invisible forces and disembodied entities that hover between presence and absence.

With Kévin Bray, Simon Denny, Constant Dullaart, Jake Elwes, Alicia Framis, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, Jen Liu, Jonas Lund, Katja Novitskova and Shizhe Qian

The current era has given rise to new forms of "ghosts": generative AI systems can create eerily realistic faces, language models power chatbots that mimic human interaction, and deepfake technology can animate and manipulate images with unprecedented realism. These digital entities flicker in and out of existence - intangible and sometimes shapeless - mimicking yet distorting humanness. We can now create digital replicas of ourselves that continue to communicate with loved ones after our death or interact with AI avatars trained on data from an ex. As more and more doppelgangers roam the internet, this raises fundamental questions about authenticity and identity.

Yet the ghostly appearances of people in AI-generated imagery have an uncanny quality: they seem human yet feel profoundly unfamiliar. They reveal how AI looks back at us, reflecting humanity like a funhouse mirror. This uncanny character extends beyond just images to the mysterious workings of the "black box" that generative AI systems represent. AI-generated content emerges from learning patterns in immense amounts of online data. A well-known danger lies in how existing norms, biases, and assumptions are adopted by these systems. These elements continue to haunt the generated outputs like ghosts from the past. Human intervention remains necessary to prevent this. Behind the appearance of autonomous systems lies a network of flesh-and-blood humans who feed, correct, and moderate AI - invisible and underpaid labor, also known as “ghost work”.

The artists in the exhibition go beyond simply using generative AI. They question and demystify its workings. They explore its creative possibilities, showing how it can give shape to personal memories and dreams or help ease loneliness. Others reveal the darker side of these technologies: their opacity and the power dynamics at play when controlled by large corporations.

Ghosts explores the liminal spaces where boundaries blur: between fantasy and reality, technology and humanity, dream and waking life, and life and death.

Image: Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, I’M HERE 17.12.2022 5:44, 2023 (film still). Courtesy Herndon Dryhurst Studio.