HOW 严肃游戏 | 马修·切拉比尼：一切都是可以计算的吗？

严肃游戏

展期：2019年8月2日-11月2日

艺术家：阿莱克斯·马伊思(Alexis Mailles)、冯晨、哈伦·法罗基(Harun Farocki)、乔恩·拉夫曼(Jon Rafman)、肯特·希里(Kent Sheely)、陆浩明、陆明龙、马修·切拉比尼(Matthieu Cherubini)、佩恩恩、彼得·尼尔森(Peter Nelson)、吴其育

策展人：付了了

地址：昊美术馆（上海）三楼展厅6、7

*购买展览门票请点击文末“阅读原文”

Please scroll down for English version.

昊美术馆（上海）最新群展“严肃游戏”于8月2日正式开幕。展览同时呈现一系列艺术家关于游戏的写作和创作手记，希望借此激发对电子游戏及相关议题的进一步思考和讨论。今天介绍的是艺术家马修·切拉比尼(Matthieu Cherubini)此次参展作品《阿富汗战争日记》及其文章《一切都是可以计算的吗？》。

《阿富汗战争日记》

阿富汗战争日记，2010

马修·切拉比尼

在线视频，无限循环

致谢艺术家

通过软件连接到一个在线战争游戏服务器——“反恐精英”，并在玩家成功击杀时进行实时碎片检索。这些碎片会触发数据库中按时间顺序进行的搜索，该数据库包含超过75,000份有关于阿富汗战争的秘密军事报告。根据检索到的数据，网站显示在地球上的实际攻击位置。因此，这个作品是由“反恐精英”的玩家所进行的虚拟杀戮产生的。

一切都是可以计算的吗？

马修·切拉比尼

2019

什么是可计算的，什么又是不可计算的，这是一个非常古老的问题。当计算机的第一个概念在17世纪被数学家和哲学家戈特弗里德·威廉·冯·莱布尼兹(Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz)所设想时，这个问题就占了首要地位。事实上，他整个职业生涯的目标是创造一个理性的微积分，通过机械计算而不是激烈的争辩和讨论来解决所有的哲学问题和争论。在我们现在所知道的数字技术的发展过程中，这个疑问已经被数量繁多的专家们讨论过，仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。

今天，随着数字技术的飞速发展，我们可以越来越多地尝试遵循莱布尼兹的逻辑。我们现在生活在这样一个时代，人们试图让一切事物都可计算：能创造艺术的人工智能，能作曲的人工智能，能照顾孩子和老人的人工智能，能打败世界冠军的人工智能等等。人们的日常新闻都充斥着这样的故事：我们认为人类独有的任务如今可以由机器/人工智能实现。

尽管这些技术进步确实令人印象深刻，但也有必要问问我们自己，这一切的意义是什么，以及人们正试图将工作自动化的本质是什么。你所倾听歌剧的美，不仅在于它的输出，还在于思考人类可以创造出这样的东西，去想象一个人为了找到这么完美的编排而花费了无数的日日夜夜。

当机器在玩具有挑战性的游戏、创作歌剧或任何意味着它们是智能的事的时候，它们会超越人类自身的智慧吗？或者，这些任务的性质是否也需要某种形式的人类“理解”才完全合乎情理？

阿富汗战争日记，2010

马修·切拉比尼

在线视频，无限循环

致谢艺术家

1980年，美国哲学家约翰·西尔(John Searle)提出了一个有趣的思考实验，称为“中国室内辩论”，以阐明“盲目”执行任务与在理解此任务的本质时执行任务之间的明显区别。

“想象一个不懂中文的英语母语者与一本操作符号（程序）的说明书一齐被锁在满是中文符号（数据库）的房间里。房间外面的人发送了一个房间里的人不知道的、含有中文符号的中文问题（输入）。按照程序中的指示，房间里的人能够发出正确答案的中文符号（输出）。这个程序可以让房间里的人通过图灵测试来理解中文，但他一个字都不懂。”

粗略地总结一下西尔的例子，并不是因为一台机器会说中文，它就能理解它。那么，为什么领会任务的本质很重要呢？

举个例子，想象一下你买了一个机器人，它可以教育和照顾你的孩子，并和他们一起玩耍（这种类型的机器人已经存在了——比如中国的iPal，一种旨在取代忙碌的父母和保姆的机器人）。机器人在做你所期望的工作，它与你的宝宝交谈，给他讲笑话、做小测验、甚至教他数学课等。但有一个问题：机器人并不真正关心你的孩子。就这一点而言，它可以以同样的热情向一块岩石讲类似的笑话和做测验。换言之，机器人可以完美地完成照顾孩子所需的任务，但只是在表面上，因为它并不真正了解这项任务的本质。因此，它缺乏提供良好育儿所需的敏感性和理解力。因为我们都认为——正如社会科学已经证明的那样（例如：哈里·哈洛的“爱的实验”）——照顾孩子不仅要给他测验和讲笑话，还要建立所谓的“爱的纽带”。这对孩子的情感、社会和认知发展都是至关重要的的因素，而机器确实还无法做到这一点（就像机器无法感受和给予爱一样）。

阿富汗战争日记，2010

马修·切拉比尼

在线视频，无限循环

致谢艺术家

这就是为什么我们在天真地购买产品之前，总是质疑科技公司通过积极的营销活动向我们所抛出的措辞，这是极其重要的。作为育儿的替代品而销售的机器人……真的吗？育儿真正意味着什么，它到底涉及什么？如果我把我的孩子交给一个可以让他开心但不能爱他或关心他的数码伴侣，我的孩子真的会受到良好的教育吗？如果你对该问题的回答是肯定的，那么请不要生育。

所以最后，问题不是关于什么可以或不能被计算，而是关于什么是合乎情理地被计算、什么不是。因为正如我们现在能观察到的，新技术提供的可能性似乎无穷无尽，这很棒。但就像我在上文中试图简要解释的一样，质疑我们想要自动化的任务的性质，理解它的含义，然后决定将这类任务委托给机器是否是正确的做法也是至关重要的。

关于艺术家

马修 · 切拉比尼

来自瑞士，现居北京。他在一家汽车公司担任设计技术专家，并在业余时间从事艺术创作。他是皇家艺术学院交互设计系 2012 年至 2015 年的博士候选人。他的研究项目讨论了人工道德代理对今天和未来的家庭及日常生活的影响。

他的个人作品已在国际上展出和呈现，包括ZKM、维特拉设计博物馆、维也纳双年展、电子艺术博物馆（HeK）、国际设计双年展、FACT画廊。

艺术家个人网站：www.mchrbn.net

“严肃游戏”展览现场

“严肃游戏”展览现场，2019 图片©昊美术馆

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Serious Games

Duration: 2019/08/02 - 2019/11/02

Artists: Alexis Mailles, Feng Chen, Harun Farocki, Jon Rafman, Kent Sheely, Andrew Luk, Lawrence Lek, Matthieu Cherubini, Payne Zhu, Peter Nelson, Wu Chi-Yu

Curator: Fu Liaoliao

Venue：Gallery 6/ 7, 3F, HOW Art Museum, No 1, Lane 2277, Zuchongzhi Road, Shanghai

Serious Games, the coming exhibition of HOW Art Museum Shanghai, will be on view on August 2. The exhibition presents in the same time the writings of participating artists, intending to stimulate further the reflection and discussion on videogames and relevant topics. Today's about exhibited artwork of Matthieu Cherubini Afghan War Diary and his article Can everything and anything be computable? . 

Afghan War Diary

Afghan War Diary, 2010

Matthieu Cherubini

Online video, infinite

Courtesy of the artist

The software connects to an online war game server - Counter-Strike - and retrieves frags (when a player kills another) in real-time. These frags trigger a chronological search in the database that contains over 75,000 secret military reports on the war in Afghanistan. Based on the retrieved data, the software shows the location of the attack on a virtual Earth. The story of the war in Afghanistan is thus generated by the virtual killings of the Counter- Strike's players.

Can everything and anything 

be computable?

Matthieu Cherubini

 2019

The question of what is computable, and what is not, is a very old one. When one of the first concepts of a computer was imagined by the mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz in the 17th century, this issue already dominated. In fact, the object/aim of his entire career was to create a rational calculus that would resolve all philosophical problems and controversies through mechanical calculation rather than by way of impassioned debate and discussion. Throughout the development of digital technology as we now know it, this issue has been debated by a wide range of experts and is still an open question. 

Today, with the rapid development of digital technology, we can increasingly attempt to follow Leibniz’s logic. We now live in an age where we attempt to make everything and anything computable: AI that can make arts, AI that can compose an opera, AI that can take care of children and elders, AI that can beat a Go world champion and so forth and so on. Our daily news feeds are literally saturated with such stories on how tasks that we thought exclusively human seem now feasible by machines / artificial intelligences.

While these technological advances are for sure impressive, it is also important to ask ourselves what is the point of it all and moreover what is the nature of the task we are trying to automatize. The beauty of an opera you listen to, is not only about the output but also to think that a human being could create such thing. To conceive that a person probably spent countless days and nights sweating over it in order to find the perfect arrangement.

Does machines prowess at playing a challenging game, composing an opera or whatsoever mean that they are intelligent, or even, could exceed our own intelligence? Or does the nature of some of these tasks require also some form of human “understanding” in order to fully make sense?

Afghan War Diary, 2010

Matthieu Cherubini

Online video, infinite

Courtesy of the artist

In 1980, the American philosopher John Searle proposed an interesting thought-experiment - called the Chinese Room Argument - to illustrate the clear distinction between “blindly” performing a task versus performing a task while understanding what the nature of this tasks is about.

“Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct answers to the questions (the output). The program enables the person in the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does not understand a word of Chinese.”

To roughly summarize Searle’s example, it is not because a machine can speak Chinese that it understands it. So, why understanding the nature of a task does matter?

Let’s take an example. Imagine that you buy a robot that can play, educate and take care of your kid (such type of robots already exist - for example iPal in China, a robot aimed to replace busy parents and nannies). The robot is doing the job as you would expect. It makes conversation with your toddler, tells him jokes and gives him quizzes or even mathematic classes among other things. But there is an issue: the robot does not genuinely care about your kid. For that matter, it could tell similar jokes and quizzes to a rock with the same zest. In other words, the robot can perfectly perform the required task of taking care of your kid...but on a superficial level only as it does not truly understand the nature of this task. Therefore it lacks the sensitivity and understanding needed for providing good childcare. Because as we would all agree and as it has already been demonstrated in social sciences (ie: Harry Harlow’s “love experiments”) - taking care of a child is not only about giving him quizzes and telling him jokes but also about creating so-called “loving bonds” which are a crucial element for the emotional, social and cognitive development of the kid and which is something that a machine for sure cannot yet do (as a machine simply cannot feel and give love).

Afghan War Diary, 2010

Matthieu Cherubini

Online video, infinite

Courtesy of the artist

That is why it is extremely important to always question the wording that tech companies are throwing at us via their aggressive marketing campaigns before naively buying their product. A robot marketed as a replacement for child care...really? What does child care really means, what does it exactly involve? Will my kid really be educated well if I put him into the hand of a digital companion that can entertain him but yet cannot and does not love or care about him? If you answered yes to that question, do not reproduce. 

So in the end, the question is not about what can or cannot be computed but more about what makes sense to be computed and what does not. Because, as we can now observe, possibilities offered by new technologies seem almost endless. Which is great. But as I briefly tried to explain above, it is also extremely important to question the nature of the task we want to automatize, understand its meaning and then decide if delegating such task to a machine is the right thing to do.

About the artist

Matthieu Cherubini is originally from Switzerland and currently based in Beijing. He works as a design technologist for a car company and on his own projects during his spare time. Between 2012-2015 he was a PhD candidate in the Design Interactions department in Royal College of Art. His research by project examined the implications of artificial moral agents on our domestic and everyday lives, both today and in the near future.

His personal work has been exhibited and presented internationally including ZKM, Vitra Design Museum, Vienna Biennale, House of Electronics Arts (HeK), Biennale Internationale de Design, FACT Gallery.

Artist official website：www.mchrbn.net

昊美术馆（上海） 

HOW ART MUSEUM (SHANGHAI)

昊美术馆（上海），图片©昊美术馆

昊美术馆（上海）是具备当代艺术收藏、陈列、研究和教育功能的全新文化机构，坐落于上海浦东，共有三层展览和活动空间，总面积约7000平方米，于2017年9月正式对外开放。昊美术馆首创“夜间美术馆”的运营模式，常规对外开放时间为周二至周五下午1点至夜间10点，周末及节假日开放时间为上午10点至夜间10点。此举能让更多观众在工作之余前来美术馆观展，昊美术馆也举办“国际策展人驻留项目”、“户外电影节”、“雕塑公园”等国际交流项目和户外活动，以此建立全新的艺术综合体和浦东新地标。

昊美术馆（温州） 

HOW ART MUSEUM (WENZHOU)

昊美术馆（温州），图片©昊美术馆

昊美术馆（温州）延续昊美术馆（上海）的“夜间美术馆”运营模式，是浙江省首家"夜间美术馆"，常规对外开放时间为下午1点到夜间10点，周末及节假日开放时间将向前延长为上午10点至夜间10点。昊美术馆（温州）将持续为公众呈现丰富的公共教育及户外艺术项目，引领融合艺术、设计、科技的全新生活方式。

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