Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

This exhibition, shown at the Ars Electronica Festival, in Linz, Austria, examined the ways in which new technologies are re-defining our identities as human beings in an era where automated procedures and agents are de facto mediating between us and the world. It relates to these automated procedures not just as signifiers of a future horizon, but as marking a new phenomenological phase in human existence. Many of these technologies have matured and have practical implementations which are used as part of our daily lives, and they arouse greater concern about the ways these technologies influence our emotional states and take part in constructing our identities, both as individuals and as part of the community.

“IL(L) Machine” suggests and examines these new relations between automated procedures performed by machines in direct relation to real life. The works presented tackle machine automation either as entities which have physical manifestation in the world, or through actions originating in algorithms which manipulate data in virtual spaces through time, in effect reconstructing the reality we encounter.

The exhibition shows a new generation of artists bringing forth a critical examination of the relations to technology as the manifestation of a new era.  It reflects the living and present conflict of Israeli art which pivots around the urge to relate to complex local issues on the one hand, and on the other hand aspires to take its place within the ongoing global discourse.