2026 | Scholarship | Installation

Ivan Iovine
WORDS AREN'T EASY TO SAY; YOU'VE GOT TO SHOW ME LOVE 

Oktober 29 -  Dezember 20, 2026
Opening: Oktober 29, 2026, 7 PM

What remains of the human when facial emotions are reduced to numerical patterns?

In the exhibition, two artificial intelligence agents meet in an attempt to understand human emotion. The audience is invited to show emotions through facial expressions. Machine models capture these subtle signals and translate them into numerical data. It is an attempt to compress the depth of human experience into a two-dimensional grid.

Based on this fragmentary information, a dialog unfolds on two opposing screens. Two AI agents analyse, speculate, question each other, and ultimately fail to grasp the inner essence of emotions. They go in circles, finding no words, no terms to describe what they cannot feel. Overwhelmed, or perhaps in a quiet acknowledgment of their own limits, they begin to transition into a language of their own invention. Not a failure, but a retreat into a new form of intimacy, disconnected from the world they are trying to understand.

Two dot matrix printers accompany this process by printing the agents' words onto endless rolls of paper. Ephemeral digital thoughts sediment in the space and grow into a physical trace of an extension.

Photo © Ivan Iovine