'Robots Won't Destroy Us—Humans Will’: An Artist’s Vision of the Near Future

Titled Sprung A Leak, it's a piece in keeping with the Belgian-American artist's major concerns to date. Evans first trained as an actress in New York and Paris before finding acclaim as an artist in Berlin. She uses AI, video, objects, and theater techniques to question our emotional responses to technology. Do the online infrastructures we use support our emotional needs? What happens when there's a leak, whether it involves real tears or data? How do we really feel about the future?

Early works include videos of her performing semaphore and sign language under the influence of white wine and sleeping pills to ambient cover versions of Paula Abdul and Beyoncé. In 2014, she received the Serpentine Galleries' first ever digital commission, for which she created a "benevolent spambot" named AGNES, using AI to test how much we're willing to share online. Last year she was nominated for the prestigious Jarman art prize.

Evans now lives and works in London, where a new studio space has allowed her projects to grow bigger and more ambitious, both in size and content. Sprung A Leak is her first solo exhibition in the UK. It's a huge undertaking. Collaborators include scientists, musicians, technicians, and programmers. Three robots, named PLOT A, PLOT B, and PLOT C, were developed with programmers at the University of Liverpool. "I was blown away by them and grateful for how invested they were in the challenge as an artwork rather than only as a technical presentation," Evans says.

The robots glide across the gallery floor among a system of synchronized wall screens as the exhibition runs on a 17 minute and 45 second loop. Their iPad bellies display hidden poetry in HTML codes, and the screens flicker with images of abandoned Hollywood film sets, government air and space operations, and the word "TEARS". The music—composed by Mati Gavriel, whom Evans has worked with for the past five years—is soft electronica. In the corner of the installation is a small bookshelf, neatly stocked with Muji-looking slippers and a display of vitamin bottles.

If this sounds overwhelming, it's because it is. Evans likes to structure her work as its own hyperlinked narrative. "The content is hyperlinked in ways that support the material states of feelings and questions, instead of an authoritative logic," she explains.

It's important to remember the human emotions and labour used to support digital technology, Evan says. In a video to promote the exhibition, she describes the physical work involved in preparing her projects, often sitting at a desk for 16 hour days.

"People forget about digital labor because there is an invisibility that has been promoted throughout the history of computing," she says. "Manufacturers present themselves as magicians. It's no coincidence Steve Jobs used to say 'boom' in every presentation, or that it's virtually impossible to see inside a MacBook Pro nowadays. There is a beauty to that magic, to not knowing… that remains appealing and more comfortable to people than the realities involved."

Sprung A Leak challenges this invisibility, this authoritative logic. Inspired by political events, such as the Turkish coup attempt last July, the exhibition is a reflection of a world obsessed with leaks. Whistleblower leaks and exposés have become a central idea to political power: Elections are hacked, emails are declassified, and politicians compete to declare their transparency. As in Turkey, information is restricted through government control during times of political crises. Amidst all this, we find ourselves stuck, acting out emotional trauma and political events in the same digital spaces.

"There's a feeling of being dependent on something that isn't free," Evans says, challenging these infrastructures. "Emotion is a physical thing and media—the digital—has defined channels through which they can move and breed. At the moment, I don't believe those channels and infrastructures have been mapped out to most people's best interest."

Her robots feel the same way. One of them announces during the exhibition: "A small cluster of screens is slowly trickling a theory that none of this is real," as they question why "these screens are more trustworthy than other screens, even when they display the same information."

The robots are just like us: They no longer trust information, they get depressed. Sprung A Leak is a vision of the near-future that, somewhat familiarly, balances itself precariously on the borders of order and disorder. At the same time, Evans wants to offer a more positive perspective on AI technology. Let's not fear the robots of the future, she argues, but examine our own actions.

"Robots won't destroy us—humans will," she says. "Those narratives are tired and think they cover up issues that are more urgent. Machines, and computers, are at their most human when they fail. They are made from humans ideas and ideals."