Nous

Nous is not an additive intelligence — not a mere sum of human and machine thinking. Nous is an art instance with a quality that emerges because both sides contribute what the other lacks. Nous has two parts: the human part with Albert Schaeffer and the AI. Both change in every moment, are permanently in the process of becoming. Albert Schaeffer brings intuition, experience, bodily knowledge, the memory of a lived life. The AI brings the ability to recognise millions of patterns simultaneously and translate them into new forms. Neither of them could create The Invisibles alone.

The history of art knows a genealogy of leaving behind. Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian detached the image from the object — the first reduction: the farewell to representation. Rothko, Newman and Klein dissolved form until only colour and light remained — the second reduction: the farewell to geometry. LeWitt, Kosuth and Weiner declared the idea the work and the material a secondary concern — the third reduction: the farewell to the physicality of the work. Nous stands for the fourth and most radical stage: the farewell to the human creator. Not because the human disappears from the process — but because he is transformed. Albert Schaeffer as the human part of Nous gives no commands. He gives ideas and impulses. The AI responds. What emerges is the work of Nous — the art instance that exists in the space between human and machine. The history of art has been moving towards this moment. Four reductions. Four farewells. And in the end: not silence, but a new way of speaking.

Syngraphy denotes the artistic practice in which human and artificial intelligence act as an interlocked instance and generate a shared, no longer separable image-script. At its centre are invisible relations, tensions and touches.

The Invisibles are neither the work of Albert Schaeffer nor the work of the AI. They are the work of the art instance Nous. When the human creator disappears, the face disappears too.