Foreword by Bill Sherman

Like a snake eating its tail, artificial intelligence exists in a circular relationship with its human creators.

The Atlas of Anomalous AI is a compelling and surprising map of our complex relationship to intelligence, from ancient to emerging systems of knowledge. A wildly associative constellation of ideas, stories, artworks and historical materials, the Atlas draws on art historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas — an image map of the “afterlife of antiquity” — to approach the defining concepts of AI from an imaginative, artistic and revitalising perspective.
The Atlas presents a hyperdimensional view of the world, through a broad range of perspectives that explore the question of what AI has been and what it is becoming. Key texts on modelling, prediction and automation are brought together with stories of science fiction, dreams and human knowledge, set among visionary and surreal images.

Contributions from writers, philosophers and curators including: Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Ramon Amaro, Noelani Arista, Jorge Luis Borges, Benjamin H. Bratton, Federico Campagna, Arthur C. Clarke, Rana Dasgupta, Eknath Easwaran, GPT-2, GPT-3, Yuk Hui, Nora N. Khan, Suzanne Kite, Jason Edward Lewis, Catherine Malabou, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Matteo Pasquinelli, Archer Pechawis, Noah Raford, Nisha Ramayya, Beth Singler and Hito Steyerl.

Artworks by: Anni Albers, Pablo Amaringo, Refik Anadol, William Blake, Ian Cheng, Ithell Colquhoun, DeepDream, Federico Díaz, Susan Hiller, Hildegard of Bingen, Pierre Huyghe, C. G. Jung, Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, Paul Laffoley, Lucy Siyao Liu, Branko Petrović and Nikola Bojić, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Casey Reas, Jenna Sutela and Suzanne Treister.

Order here

The Ritual of the Snake. Gianni Politi. cura.books.

What images can speak today of the Absolute in a universal way? Aby Warburg’s legendary journey among the native tribes of North America – an experience reported in the famous 1923 conference on the “Serpent Ritual,” which in 1939 appeared in the Warburg Institute’s «Journal», and later became the scholar’s spiritual testament – represents the emotional and cultural reference behind a collection of 80 images, selected by eight artists and eight curators, dedicated to the identification and construction of a personal and collective imaginary. The power of images, of which Warburg investigated the origins in magic rituals and in spiritual and pagan celebrations, is given back here through the explorations of the authors involved, who, thanks to a variety of experiences and of historical, personal and cultural references, go through the kaleidoscopic landscape of contemporary iconography.

Softcover
Concept: Gianni Politi
Design: Andrea Baccin

Price: €18.00

Buy it