December 5th, 2025
Together with Benoît Fliche (Institut d’ethnologie et d’anthropologie sociale, Aix-Marseille Université) and Eduard Fosch Villaronga (Center for Law and Digital Technologies, Leiden University), I was invited to talk about A.I. from the perspective of neuroscience and my own artistic practice. The occasion was a series of talks on AI at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, put together by Professor Vincent Rioux. As part of the first-year curriculum, he bring together experts from different fields in a kaleidoscope of unique viewpoints – showing how these different areas connect and overlap on complex issues that don’t have clear answers, so that it is important to explore them from multiple angles to help us think about them more clearly.
This was the first time I made a talk on the topic, and it was a challenge to find an angle that respected the complexity, the audience and my own embryonic ideas on the matter. Luckily, a couple of weeks ago, under the pleasure of a beer at a noisy bar, Samon Takahashi suggested I talk about language. Brilliant. That became the guiding concept through which I was able to re-visit older works and develop new thoughts. I also did quite a bit of reading on the topic, much of which didn’t get a place anywhere, and is now probably mostly forgotten. However, I kept my notes, and with the help of A.I., here is a summary:
The presentation aimed to connect thoughts on neuroscience, my own art, and research in artificial intelligence through the idea of language as the link between inner experience and external expression.
From the earliest anatomical texts to modern EEG recordings, language allows us to describe the unseen workings of the mind. In science, analysis separates complex signals into identifiable patterns such as alpha activity; in art, sound and performance synthesize fragments of sound, thoughts and ideas into a shared experience.
By translating brain activity into sound, one can imagine an acoustic vocabulary of consciousness, making private neural rhythms public and blurring the line between observer and observed. Through collaborations, from EEG‑based performances and collective hypnosis to remote and even cosmic transmissions of brain data, I extended this mimesis beyond the body, turning introspection into interaction and communication across minds, machines, and distances.
In the last part of the talk, the focus shifted toward learning and emergence, paralleling the adaptive nature of both brains and artificial neural networks. Performances exploring networks of people, reinforcement learning, and feedback loops show how meaning arises from connection but also how control and dependence can emerge within those systems.
To conclude, I suggested that language—whether spoken, neural, acoustic, or algorithmic—is our means of bridging subjective and objective worlds, revealing that understanding itself is a form of synthesis: the continuous effort to translate the invisible patterns of experience into something collective, audible, and shared.
Now, the first time a new presentation is given never goes according to plan, and of course I tried to say too much in too little time. However, I think it has been a producive exercise, and one I am looking forward developing further at the next occation. I might also take some ideas from Eduard and Benoît:
Benoît kicked off the talks with a cautionary note about how the digital age, and AI in particular, affects desire as understood through Lacanian psychoanalysis. In other words, what drives us to get out of bed in the morning, our ability to strive for happiness. This is a point that warrants reflection, filled with seeming reversals and mirror images. AI itself is a driving force, but one profoundly different from our human desires (physical of psychological). Although one can draw parallels between human and artificial cognition (as I did), there’s no denying the existential gap between us—and what motivates us, or the fact that we are motivated, unlike AI.
Closing the symposium, Eduard illustrated how robotics and AI are permeating almost every aspect of human life through photographs and videos of specialized robots in action. AI is both replacing us and helping us, especially those with mental and physical disabilities. Particularly moving and thought-provoking was his exploration of the fact that sexual assistance technologies still primarily cater to idealized, able-bodied users (and that they themselves are modelled in a very normative ways).
On all accounts, the symposium was a success. The students seemed into it, and hearing different speakers back-to-back sparked some great conversations and new ways of thinking. The topic has certainly been enriched for me, with new ideas to think about an emerging new world, and an awareness on its impacts on our social and mental life.