Too many rooms, too many views at the Eden Hotel.
Transversal regards on a territory imprinted by the fabrication of a brain.
Cédric Noël, Raymond Balau, Anaïs Chabeur, Laure Cottin Stefanelli, Benoît Dusart, Mira Sanders, Joachim Olender.
Since 2013, Hotel Eden in Geneva is the neighbour of an imposing Campus that is dedicated to biotechnology, housing the projects: Blue Brain and Human Brain (the last one endowed with a European subsidy of 1 billion euros). Their joined goals are the cartography of the brain and the creation of a synthetic brain through the simulation of the cerebral functions. Against the background play violent criticism of the international scientific community, the global race in Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and the dream to commission an artificial human brain.
The research is backed by the hypothesis of a relation between an ecosystem and an artificial life. It is based on the book “Métamorphoses de l’intelligence – Que faire de leur cerveau bleu?” (2017, PUF) in which philosopher Catherine Malabou exposes the challenge to initiate the relation between the living and the non-living in another adventure than the outdated one of their difference.
In the first place, it involves formulating a criticism on the current representations (images, narratives) of our relations with the A.I. Secondly, the researchers, in a dynamic residence, study the projection of this brain on the Geneva neighbourhood of Sécheron (the space and its users). The challenge is to reveal a phantom as well as addressing a state of affairs of our relation to that fabrication. The notion of belief insinuated in the research needs to be examined – belief in a return of investment, belief in an apparition ... The Hotel Eden (both hotel and Eden), as intermediary, will orientate the research from the point of view of its structure and the treatment of the in situ investigations. In collaboration with the option Urban Space at ENSAV La Cambre, the project envisages the production of an exhibition and publications, in a crossover with science, urban planning, economy, tourism and art.
Fieldstation participates in the project by exploring possibilities to identify, map and categorise the collective output gathered by all participating researchers and relate it to the complex and layered reality of Hotel Eden resulting in Decoding Affinities, a dynamic work in progress archive.
A work in pogress version of Decoing Affinities is on display at Wiels as part of the Risquons-tout Exhibtion at Wiels
