Weird science …
A world where flies, humans and machines are the chief protagonists sounds like a classic dystopian nightmare. Yet Pierre Huyghe’s UUmwelt manages to be not just chilling but seductive and, occasionally, absurd.
The mind’s eye …
In stripped-down rooms, a few screens project a miasma of digital imagery, where against a vague streak of a landscape, mutating hunks veer from fleshy to ornate. It’s produced by computers flipping through their image banks to find a match with brain waves generated by a man asked to both look at and imagine undisclosed forms.
Fly with me …
Meanwhile, bluebottles breed in their thousands in the gallery, witnessing its images just as we are. Do they herald the end of humanity and the rise of the machines?
Inside out …
This is what AI produces when it tries to read our minds. The amorphous flickering shapes invite us humans to make further interpretative efforts, bringing our own experience to bear on what we see. The mismatch from consciousness to consciousness is uncanny, creepy and a little comic.
Serpentine Gallery, W2, to 10 February
