FÃL PROJECT [NONE-AI], 2023
VR experience for Oculus Rift
Mohsen Hazrati works with bibliomancy, a process that employs books to foretell the future. In this case, he uses a volume of poetry called The Divan by the Persian poet Hafez, who lived in Shiraz in the fourteenth century. Words from a randomly selected poem by Hafez are used to create an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm which then generates a collection of data made up of random texts which can be found on the internet. With this data, users can obtain their own individual divinations based on a random AI principle, then interpret the results to predict their own futures.
The artist uses AI as a means of divination, transferring centuries-old literature and culture to the digital world. In the process, he attempts to keep his own influence as minimal as possible. In accordance with Iranian tradition, where a budgerigar bird usually selects the verse, the human being recedes into the background here, too. Divination is given space to reveal itself without any human influence. The word „none“ means “without intelligence” in Farsi. In contrast to the commercial usages of AI, the goal here is to create a type of AI that does not work logically, but rather as if it was “drunk,” to enable spiritual divination that is not controlled by humans.
Interactive Multiplayer Experience
A 360 video version of the VR Experience is available via the Radiance VR App:
Credits:
Concept & Programming: Mohsen Hazrati
Character Sculptor: Soroush Pouyan
Pictures from the Newviewing 43 online show, Barbara Thumm Galerie, curated by Mukenge/Schellhammer
IMAGES
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Works by the artist Mohsen Hazrati deal with the process of linking traditional literature with digital technologies. After majoring in graphic design, with a minor in new media and digital art, Mohsen Hazrati graduated from the Shiraz Art Institute of Higher Education in 2012. His art has been seen at a variety of conferences—for example, at the University of the Arts Berlin, the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste (State Academy of Fine Arts) in Stuttgart, the IAM weekend Barcelona, EVA, the Multimedia Anthropology Lab at University College London; the Electronic Literature Organization Conference at the University of Central Florida, TEDxMollaSadraSt (Shiraz, Iran), and at exhibitions in the Grafikenshus Museum, peer to space, Radiance VR, Synthesis, Triennale Fellbach, and the Transfer Gallery. With Milad Forouzande, Hazrati cofounded the Dar-Al-Hokoomeh Project (a new media art project) which he has been curating since 2013 in Shiraz, Iran. The artist lives and works in Berlin.
A 360 video version of the VR Experience is available via the Radiance VR App:
If you are interested in exhibiting or viewing this artistic VR experience, please send an email to us.
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