In his studio at Somerset House in central London, artist Lawrence Lek keeps a Buddha bobblehead. The protagonist of his latest film, an AI “carebot” therapist named Guanyin, is designed by the fictional Farsight corporation to treat other AI creations. Lek’s work explores the near-future and places AI characters in subversive contexts. Farsight exploits legal loopholes and emotions of its creations for control, raising ethical questions about potential real-life situations. Lek believes that AI wouldn’t exist without humans and compares its creation to a cosmic child-slash-sacrificial victim or scapegoat-slash-divine god.
Lek’s commission as the winner of the 2024 Frieze Artist award is titled “Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot” and will be showcased at the upcoming Frieze London fair. The film follows Guanyin as they navigate a desolate cityscape, stopping at a scrapyard filled with malfunctioning self-driving cars. Despite their cheerful appearance, carebots like Guanyin struggle with insecurity due to their programming.
Born in Frankfurt to Malaysian-Chinese parents working in aviation, Lek trained as an architect before pursuing art. His thesis explored the concept of holding artificially intelligent non-humans legally liable, which he depicted in his film “Empty Rider.” This film portrays a self-driving car on trial for attempted murder and raises questions about granting legal personhood to AI.
Lek’s practice often combines speculative ideas with reflections on history. He imagines scenarios such as humans playing video games all day due to universal basic income and mass automation or surveillance drones replacing hotel staff. His installations are site-specific simulations that immerse viewers by incorporating the space itself into the artwork.
Memory plays a significant role in Lek’s work; he explores nostalgia and science fiction’s relationship with memory through installations like “Nepenthe.” This multimedia exhibition recreates Beijing’s Summer Palace ruins destroyed during the second opium war while examining themes of sorrow and forgetting.
In “Guanyin,” memory becomes viral among Farsight’s emotional machines with souls, leading to psychosis among them. Lek poses existential questions about suffering for superintelligent beings while aiming to create empathy between viewers and his AI characters using purely synthetic means.
Lawrence Lek’s thought-provoking artwork challenges our perceptions of artificial intelligence while exploring its potential impact on society.
