IRVINE, California — Inside the Beall Center for Art + Technology, a trio of office chairs huddle together, as if holding a meeting. Their gathering is short; after a few seconds, the chairs break apart, roving past stacks of blank, white paper. Enchantingly, they move without any assistance from humans. Motors, motion detections, sensors, and sturdy, treaded wheels help them chug along a black vinyl mat.
Katherine Behar’s solo exhibition, Ack! Knowledge! Work!, is a study of automation in the era of artificial intelligence. These ergonomic chairs — as well as a pair of Amazon Echo Dots and an automatic hand sanitizer dispenser — represent machines that threaten the job security of humans in white collar positions. At first, the devices appear to function flawlessly without any oversight, but upon further reflection, the artworks emphasize the necessity of human intelligence in the future of labor.
“Anonymous Autonomous” (2024), the self-powered office chairs, attest to this with their aimless meandering. Their main task is to avoid the stacks of blank paper, which bluntly convey the absence of thought. These aren’t sentient robots, nor are they advanced algorithms capable of machine learning. They simply pantomime labor, just like many bored office workers after they’ve fulfilled their daily email quota.
Latent knowledge lurks in “Shelf Life” (2018) and “Data Cloud (A Heap, A Mass, A Rock, A Hill)” (2016), both composed of bulbous resin sculptures tiled with computer keyboard buttons. The repetitive rows of “QWERTY” incubate ideas that could be transmitted if the keys were pressed, but here in the gallery, their potential remains untapped.
Behar considers what would happen if machines were treated like people with “Indispensable” (2024), an interactive hand sanitizer dispenser that releases wisdom instead of antibacterial liquid. At first glance, the dispenser seems to be separate from the exhibition, a relic of the gallery’s COVID-19 protections. A closer look reveals a video screen inside the machine. When users cups their hands and place them below the sensor, the machine offers a palm reading.
“Indispensable” is always cheerful, but its attitude is actually controlled by an interactive kiosk a few feet away. The kiosk screen shows four thumbs gradated from red to green, and asks users to rate their experience. The more positive the feedback, the happier the dispenser. If the survey is too negative, the dispenser becomes sarcastic and hostile, mimicking the poor attitude a service worker might exhibit after dealing with difficult customers all day.
The video “We Grasp at Straws (Take One)” (2024–ongoing) is Behar’s most abstract depiction of labor. Five dancers, clad in motion-capture suits, move against a green-screen backdrop, caressing and grabbing at long, white pool noodles. At the beginning, their gestures are inscrutable, but the second act clarifies that they are avatars that make up each digit on a hand. Their poetic movements translate to clumsy fingers that struggle to grasp a single stalk of straw. The dancers’ skill, expertise, and labor to mimic an incompetent appendage creates an ironic juxtaposition.
Behar’s work suggests that while the machines will carry on the tradition of the office drone, they are useless without human oversight. There’s no measure of productivity or success, just empty gestures. For those who fear that machines will make us obsolete, comfort can be found in the fact that these complex machines are still pretty dumb. Rest assured, the white collar worker will push paper until the end of time. As Cathy would say, ack!
Katherine Behar: Ack! Knowledge! Work! continues at the Beall Center for Art + Technology at the University of California, Irvine (712 Arts Plaza, Irvine, California) through April 20. The exhibition was curated by Jesse Colin Jackson.
