576 Tears

Zach Blas

What can Artificial Intelligence (AI)* learn from our tears? This new online commission is an experiment in emotional crying with an imagined Artificial Intelligence god. The project explores the religious beliefs and fantasies that influence popular conceptions of Artificial Intelligence and brings together research on Silicon Valley spirituality and the extractive qualities of AI as a technology and industry.

576 Tears invites audiences to experience how and what an AI god might learn from the process of religious weeping. As a symbol and ritual of worship, religious crying is considered a pious method of communicating with god and the divine. By training an AI god on images of tears; writings on crying in religious, philosophical, scientific, cultural, and technical contexts; music about weeping; the sounds of crying; and the emotional state of website visitors’ faces, 576 Tears broadly considers what tears might communicate, symbolise, express, and teach in an era that fantastically imbues Artificial Intelligence with godly power.

The commission’s title 576 Tears is derived from the 1966 pop song “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians and also relates to the six emotions that AI can recognise, which are anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. By multiplying 96 tears by these six emotions, Blas reaches 576 tears. The work features a machine learning-generated video that is created from a training set of 576 computer graphics images of crying eyes, which span the six emotional states detectable by AI emotion recognition software.

By clicking on the left navigation teardrop icon on the 576 Tears website, users are presented with an “origin story” of the AI god. Crafted with machine learning-generated text, the story details a religion centered around consuming tears and calculating emotions. When clicking on the right navigation teardrop icon, the AI god coaxes users to scan their face categorising them into one of the six emotions detectable by AI (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise).

Based on this categorisation, users go on to experience augmented reality emotional crying and are prompted to offer their tears to the AI god. Having agreed to these terms, users are then presented with a detailed image of their tears overlaid with a poetic text, such as an aphorism, prophecy, or prediction. This text is machine learning-generated from six databases of writings that span holy texts, scientific inquiries, and California futurist studies, all corresponding to the six emotional states. The resultant image and text are saved to the site and paired with an audio snippet of the AI god interpreting sounds of emotional crying.

The commission culminates in an ever-growing archive of tears collected from users and is underpinned by a musical score composed with an AI neural network** trained on the sounds of crying and the aforementioned song 96 Tears by ? And The Mysterians.

Artist Zach Blas says:

“I cried a lot this year and last. Like many others, the pandemic brought loss and grief into my life. I would often see tears on my face reflected back on the glossy surfaces of my phone and computer. During this time, I was researching religious and spiritual depictions of AI. In particular, I was taken with popular representations of AI as a god-like entity capable of inflicting judgment and granting immortality. It’s easy enough to find representations of AI like this in blockbuster films, but I also noticed this in memes of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam fresco, in which god is replaced with an AI robot, and also The Way of the Future, a Silicon Valley church founded upon a coming AI god.

I began to wonder, how might such an AI god receive tears? Does this AI god extract tears of sadness from exploited, underpaid workers as they label images for AI systems to further develop? Does the AI god collect tears of ecstatic joy from Silicon Valley elites as they strive to bring about the singularity, leaving their bodies behind through technological transcendence? Does the AI god gather tears of fear from those subjected to predatory AI applications like predictive policing? Does this AI god aggregate tears of anger from those who have lost their jobs to AI automation? When an AI god consumes tears of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, it also learns how to cry. But what do the tears of an AI god communicate and symbolise? If humans may weep to gods, then for whom or what does an AI god’s tears fall?”

Definitions

*Artificial Intelligence - The use of computer programs that have some of the qualities of the human mind, such as the ability to understand language, recognize pictures, and learn from experience. (Cambridge Dictionary)

**Neural Network- A computer system or a type of computer program that is designed to copy the way in which the human brain operates. (Cambridge Dictionary)

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576 Tears by Zach Blas is curated and commissioned by UP Projects for This is Public Space. It is generously funded by Arts Council England and produced by:

• Web Design: Studio Pandan
• Web Developer: Alex Piacentini
• Computer Graphics: Harry Sanderson
• Machine Learning Engineers: Ashwin D’Cruz and Christopher Tegho
• Audio: xin
• Additional Audio Engineering: Aya Sinclair
• Augmented Reality Face Filters: Marine Renaudineau and Harry Sanderson

About Zach Blas

Zach Blas (b. Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA) is an artist, filmmaker, and writer whose practice spans moving image, computation, theory, performance, and science fiction. Blas engages the materiality of digital technologies while also drawing out the philosophies and imaginaries lurking in artificial intelligence, biometric recognition, predictive policing, airport security, the internet, and biological warfare. The Doors (2019) is an immersive environment that imagines a new psychedelic age fueled by AI, nootropics, and tech culture.SANCTUM(2018) is a sex dungeon-cum-detention center that recasts security and surveillance through BDSM. A film installation, Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 (2018) follows author Ayn Rand on an acid trip, in which she bares witness to a dystopian future of the internet. im here to learn so :)))))) (2017), a four-channel video installation and collaboration with Jemima Wyman, resurrects Microsoft AI Tay to consider the gendered politics of pattern recognition and machine learning. Facial Weaponization Suite (2011-14) consists of amorphous masks that demand opacity against biometric facial recognition systems. Recent exhibitions include British Art Show 9, Positions #6, Van Abbemuseum; Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI at the de Young Museum; The Body Electric at the Walker Art Center; the 2018 Gwangju Biennale; and the 68th Berlin International Film Festival. Blas’s practice has been supported by a Creative Capital award in Emerging Fields, the Arts Council England, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. His work is in the collections of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and Whitney Museum of American Art. His 2021 artist monograph Unknown Ideals is published by Sternberg Press.