Das Fremde
Michael Spranger received a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels (Belgium) in 2011.
He currently holds a research position at Sony CSL Inc. Tokyo, Japan and has published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers on AI, developmental robotics and computational linguistics.
Das Fremde immerses visitors as explorers who witness the birth of a language and the evolution of the culture of another, non-organic life form. The installation tries to capture the moment of discovery: the moment the audience turn into pioneers and ethnologists stumbling upon an emerging civilization.
Das Fremde is a performative installation featuring a species of artificially intelligent entities that create their own language and culture through a cultural evolutionary process. The cultural identity of this micro-society faces foreign cultural elements – the visitors. Like any indigenous population gradually invaded by an outside population, its culture is forced to expand, to hybridise, withdraw or possibly surrender.
