The Birth of GAIA

Nam June Paik Art Center tries to show the art world of the artists participating in the exhibition On Collecting Time from multiple angles. As one of several questions about ‘collecting time,’ we prepared a talk with the artist Jinah Roh under the title of ‘The Birth of GAIA.’ Jinah Roh has been producing talking robots for a long time. In particular, An Evolving GAIA, owned by the Nam June Paik Art Center, is a robot with a desire to become a human. Some rather heavy and existential questions and answers may come and go during the viewers talk to the machine that wants to become a living being. And through this process, the viewers experience emotional agitation beyond simple interaction with the machine. And such experiences show a new aspect of communication that was never imagined to operate within the dichotomy between machines and humans.

In this talk, Jinah Roh will talk about the history of the birth of robots that she has been making for a long time, including ‘GAIA,’ about the aesthetic achievements of her experiments and productions, and about the interaction with machines, arts, and viewers. Through this talk program, visitors will be able to explore the process of evolving ‘GAIA,’ a sculpture and an artificial intelligence robot, into a goddess of the earth and a living being that learns and expands itself.