Cost Of Being
What is our cost of existence? It’s not a question we often ask ourselves, but an important one nonetheless. What are the invisible costs of our food consumption, demolishing our habitat, and polluting the planet? While other beings are “paying into” the ecosystem just by existing (plans cleaning polluted air for example), we are draining its resources. This is what artist and graphic designer Guelang Choi, better known as “G”, explores during her time at the AULA Future Lab, a project by IMRSV Arts in collaboration with H&M beyond in Berlin.
With her installation “Costs of Being”, G wants to challenge the viewer to take a closer look at their everyday lives, as well as toy with the idea of an Artificial Intelligence partner to assist us.
Meet G
In 2020, G moved from Seoul, South Korea to Berlin to work as a freelance graphic designer. She immediately found the city to be very diverse and found people who were just as concerned and passionate about sustainability and the environment as she is. She remains impressed about the possibility to have a career in sustainability, and is looking to take advantage of the unique opportunity to work in the industry.
Concept
After she applied to the AULA Future Lab, G found a new way to explore sustainability through the lens of technology such as AI, our theme for this year’s lab. Her first assignment was to learn more about the world of AI, and each participant spent weeks researching it. After an introductory presentation by Kathryn Lawrence, G found an interest in machine learning and text-based AI.
Beginnings
The second part of the lab involved getting very familiar with one’s deepest curiosities. Each participant was asked what they cared most about, and how they felt the world could be a better place. G took interest in how our actions and behaviors affect other people and things. What we consume and produce affects the rest of the world. G’s motivation became making others aware of this connection to other living things.
G calls our ecological footprint our “cost of being”. Everything we do, has a cost, and impacts our environment in some way, both negatively and positively. What can we do to lower our cost of being? Small things like buying seasonal and local foods, turning off the water if we’re not using it, etc., are all day-to-day actions that can lower our impact.
After diving into more research on the topic, G hypothesized that if an AI tool that was able to create a rough picture of the impact of our everyday actions in a way we could understand existed, perhaps we could take a more active role in lowering the negative costs of our existence.
Project
G combined what she learned about text-based AI and generative text, and attached the technology to a familiar machine: a receipt printer. As the viewer walks through her installation, they will notice various beings; real fish, plants, and dolphins on TV screens, are all attached to receipt printers, which are stacked atop one another in the center of the space. On the printed receipts is a detailed description of the various activities attached to each creator and their corresponding “cost”.
Eventually, the viewer will notice a mirror, reflecting themselves. You are immediately confronted with yourself as just another animal. As you approach the mirror, a camera registers that a human is present, and the printer attached to the mirror is triggered. As more people engage with the installation, the longer the receipt becomes.
G wants to give us the opportunity to see ourselves as another species, sharing the same Earth as others. Our negative impact on the environment is out of control, but perhaps there is room to begin balancing our expenses.
We are all equally guilty of the total sum of our cost of being, and G is just as humbled and reflective of that fact. In a way, that is what the AULA Future lab is about–using the process of art-based research to reflect on our own interactions with the world.
Perhaps you’ve experienced the sudden surge of guilt about your ecological footprint, and then the inevitable moment where you forget to turn off the sink, or you order take-out with the plastic straws included. Yes, it takes a lot of time and energy to keep track of our ecological footprint alone.
That’s where an AI partner might come in, offering us an instant “mirror”, reflecting how our everyday behaviors impact the other creatures inhabiting the world. And looking at this reflection as a dollar amount in the form of a receipt is a powerful image, and one that we can all understand.
Imagine our AI, alerting us how expensive our long shower is. Would we cut it short, thinking of our fellow plants and animals? Would we plan better and enjoy some luxuries while limiting others? Perhaps we could begin to learn to share our planet, and even find joy in “lowering our cost of being”.
