‘Are you for real?’ It would be an odd question to ask if we didn’t have technologies capable of not only representing but generating realities. Computation propels a shift in our understanding of what ’real’ is, and how it should be distinguished from the merely possible, the virtual, and the actual.

Realities can be constructed by calculating machines as much as by the scientific activity that shapes how we perceive digital and analog life-worlds. The understanding that computation and scientific investigation are two main forces that define realities lies at the core of ARE YOU FOR REAL, a web-based platform that aspires to situate and question a multiplicity of cosmotechnics (to pick up Yuk Hui’s term). Shaped by a diverse and decentralized community of artists through a sequence of cosmological propositions, the platform alternates between the terrestrial and extraterrestrial, the ecological and technological, the magical and decolonial. It enables users to grasp various aspects of digitalization, and to explore a reality now irreducibly entangled with the online sphere.

In discussion with Lou Cantor, Bassam el Baroni, and an oracle, the two curators of the platform, Giulia Bini and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, explore different aspects of machinic intelligence with regards to its material regimes of production and relation to other forms of consciousness, agency, and free will.

The Oracle is a work of speculative storytelling that prompts viewers to contemplate the continually shifting dynamic between humanity and artificial intelligence. In challenging the ramifications of our technological creations and the moral imperatives that accompany this nascent coexistence, as seen with topics such as algorithmic governance and the preservation of cognitive autonomy, its narrative elicits fundamental ethical inquiries into forthcoming applications of computational technologies.

ARE YOU FOR REAL was initiated by ifa - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in 2020. Phase Two is curated by Giulia Bini and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, with design and programming by Yehwan Song and sound design crafted by Enrico Boccioletti.