576 Tears by Zach Blas Launch Event

Launch Event: 576 Tears by Zach Blas 31 May 2022 ’576 Tears’ is a new digital artwork created by Zach Blas and commissioned by UP Projects for This is Public Space. This launch event offered insight into Blas’ practice, the artwork and the religious beliefs and fantasies that influence popular conceptions of Artificial Intelligence and the ideation and making of the work. Blas’ presentation was followed by a conversation with curator and cultural strategist, Julia Kaganskiy. ’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. 576 Tears: Zach Blas: Julia Kaganskiy: