Five original works, born from a dialogue between artists and technology, were produced especially for the exhibition. Each one establishes a different arena that challenges our perception, asking where we decide to draw the line between subject and object in a world that asks us to constantly update our definitions.
Focusing on the technological limitations of the medium of expression, the artists in the exhibition have reached a branching discourse around questions of truth, manipulation, belief, and empathy, each of which they have answered in a different way. While some artists see truth as an increasingly redundant issue in the contemporary era, others propose a fusion between the physical and digital worlds, and others envision a return to a realistic ideal under the auspices of technology. Like a prism, each of the arenas allows us to observe the complex present in which we live in a slightly different way and perhaps to tune our minds a little towards the future.
As befits art and a discourse that concerns reality as it emerges, it is possible that none of the works necessarily offer the answers that their creators intended, and in the face of the whole, the audience is invited to continue the discourse in an attempt to decipher its boundaries.
In his work 'Everything is Fine' Yaniv Sheinfeld created a farm. There is no animal, no plant, no farm, no person on the farm. However, from the white noise, it constantly and ceaselessly produces creatures, plants and people. We visit the stand that the farm has set up to tell about itself: works of art from past generations, family photo books, old diaries, expired milk bottles, a donation box and more. From these items, a surreal world is revealed, in which all the characters are replicas of the artist and all the animals are hybrid creatures (except for cats, which remain as usual). From the multitude of exhibits, the unique and winding story of the 'Everything is Fine' farm is revealed. As the farm volunteers say: "Because everything is really fine, before we used a hoe, we used our hands and everything was and remains fine."
In the work 'I can feel it', Lior Zalmanson translated a scene from the film "2001: A Space Odyssey." During the scene, astronaut Dr. David Bowman disconnects the computer HAL 9000 - responsible for operating the spaceship - while the computer tries to calm him down, begs for his life and expresses fear. The scene is familiar due to the director and screenwriter's attempt to create empathy among the astronaut and the audience. Today, computers are supposedly able to express empathy better than ever before, and studies show that people are no longer able to distinguish between human products and artificial intelligence products. Zalmanson used the GPT engine several times, and each time asked it to make the computer's speech more and more human. The newly created text initially seemed like a more successful manipulation, but as the machine tries to improve its humanity, the flaws in its perception also become apparent.
In his work 'The Focus', Jonathan Ofrat presents a video triptych of dying cameras. Each video captures the last signals transmitted by cameras from a different theatrical scene of destruction - some on fire, some beaten, and some on the operating table. The artist takes the casual, observing frame and, through violence, transforms it into the perspective of an object that is being destroyed. Ironically, the perspective from within the cameras, which experiences the violence of the creator, transforms the most mechanical moments - light penetration, focus problems, the exposure of the graphics card itself - into the most authentic moments of awareness and pain.
The 'Thai Letter-Omat' is a computational machine developed by Eyal Gross based on cellular automata (similar to Conway's Game of Life), except that the states of the system are represented by letters of the alphabet. A letter in the grid will advance to the next letter in the alphabet if at least one of its eight surrounding neighbors is identical to that next letter (and after 'T' comes 'A'). From the letteristic move in which the letters obey purely mathematical regularities and have lost their semantic function, Gross attempts to recompose words by introducing a deliberate flaw in the system or a "Kleinman": selected words, when they are spontaneously formed, can "freeze" for a while. By choosing a special word that creates complex geometric behaviors around it, which also involve the semantic meaning of that word, the letter-Omat constitutes a kind of modern Jewish amulet that sanctifies the word.
In the video "Night Fortress," Hannah Enoshima Manheimer created a reenactment of the Salahiya family's barricading on the roof of their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem following a plan to demolish the house in order to build a public institution on the ground. The dramatic event was recreated using real players on the platform of the cooperative online game Fortnite. In the video game, an environment was built that mimics the real architecture of the arena, and Fortnite players wearing avatars became doubles of the real-life barricaders, carrying gas canisters, flammable material, and setting mattresses on fire. While in reality the event ended with the police evacuating the barricaders on the roof and in the building in the dead of night, the event in Fortnite ends with the threat being carried out and the arena and the barricaders being set on fire. The soundtrack that accompanies the reconstruction was taken from the original scene, from news broadcasts and police documentation databases at the time of the actual evacuation.

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