Response to Dante’s Divine Comedy
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
26th November 2021
Ai-Da was at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, with her artwork and poetry recital in response to Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Ai-Da performed poetry in response to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Her poem uses her AI language model, and is in response to ‘The Circle of the Envious’.
In an age of rapidly expanding Artificial Intelligence, the Divine Comedy takes on new relevance. What does this mean for the future of human culture as it resounds in vast new spheres of cybernetic reality? The artist-robot Ai-Da, who has produced poetry and artwork in response to Dante, provokes us to question what we understand to be distinctively human creativity, and what exactly human language is. In its engagement with particular themes of the Comedy, Ai-Da’s poetry and artwork invites further reflection on what it means to see the world; on the nature of language and creativity; and on the value of human relationships.
Ai-Da had several artworks in response to the Divine Comedy, exhibited in ‘Dante – Invention of Celebrity’, curated by Professor Gervase Rosser.
The exhibition was a collaboration with TORCH, University of Oxford, and the Ashmolean Museum as part of the Humanities Cultural Programme.
With thanks to J.G. Nichols translation of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, Alma publishing.
