“Training your best Friend: A character test” 2020
2 Channel, 8:16 min, loop, Videoinstallation
In the work “Training your best Friend: A character test ” the co-evolutionary relationship between human and machine is examined. Whether there is a co-evolutionary process between human and machine, and how a co-evolution between human and machine behaves, is reflected on the basis of the historical background and future significance of the battle tank.
Tanks are declared dead every few years, but do not disappear from the contemporary arsenal of weapons. Will the tank of the future perhaps have a completely different form in the context of a digital battlefield?
“This process increasingly complements the co-evolution of human and animal. Another mutation of the human-dog relationship is already foreseeable, namely the mutation to a human-machine relationship. It follows the logic of domestication. The dog is a product of breeding intervention in the wild forms of nature – a mirror of art, not of nature, as was already said in the Roman antiquity (canis est speculum artis, non naturae). If one replaces the word “art” simply with “technology”. Then it seems logical that the breeding of the dog is more and more drawn into the domain of technology”.*
LEO MN2033 a “companion species” a trained artificial intelligence that is both a pet and a fighting machine. Its task is to serve as a companion in everyday life and to protect humans. For this reason, Leo MN2033 has been assigned to the category of working dog, which is subject to the strict and constantly monitored requirements of the German Electronic Shepherd Dog Association (ESV). Human as well as machine must be trained to be allowed to enter into a so-called “marriage” together. For this, both must pass a character test.
*Eduard Kaeser: Ich trotze, also bin ich
Installation view
