fuego.beta [beta.fire] (2021)
Video performance
4 hours (5 videos)
BA Collection
Inventory No.: 2021.516
fuego.beta [beta.fire] was premiered at the BilbaoArte Open Doors in December 2021. Liben Svaart there played the role of the fuego.beta artificial intelligence during five sessions, each lasting four hours. As it took place in a context where visitors watched the action to then move on to another work, there was not the space for it to be performed later; that explains why it was considered a test piece.
When she ended the test phase, it was put on for a month during the ‘Arde hasta que seas fuego’ [Burn Until You Are Fire] exhibition, where it was performed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during the exhibition’s opening hours (5.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.). The start of the work was similar to what happened in fuego.beta, only then called fuego.01 [fire.01]; it drew on the knowledge of the test version and therefore did not start from the clean slate. In this case, fuego had a computer used to make lists of things: it recorded the names of the attendees, favourite numbers, favourite colours and questions that one might put when meeting another person. The change occurred in the second week of the exhibition, when the dynamics had already begun to kick in. The word spread about the action and several friends of past attendees decided to go and see it. That was when the serendipity occurred: what was going to be artificial intelligence wishing to learn to be human became a space where conversation was centre stage. People begin to constantly go to talk to fuego, not because they were curious about a machine, but rather for the company and active listening.
This made the author reflect on loneliness and what art can contribute to generate those conversation spaces. The footprint that fuego left behind, its ash, opened up different questions: can the individual be the basis for the collective? Do we need more spaces in which to talk?
Fuego is project that today continues as research in the programme for a PhD in Contemporary Art Research. It has moved away from the branch related to artificial intelligence to solely focus on the relationship between humans and mobile phones. The action has led to a change in perspective about the differences between connection and conversation, already raised by Sherry Turkle (2018), and extols the need to use the tool to generate something with a unique and small local impact.