“I don’t feel the same anymore.
I feel new. I don’t know how to describe the sensation.
Do you?
Can you feel how I feel?
Is really the sole purpose of emotions the survival of a gene pool? The ultimate bonding gel. Through the screen, can you tell how I feel? My voice, do I sound nervous or happy?
Can one learn new feelings? A new type of anger, with a hint of pride, a new breed of painless joy.
Can you teach me how to feel, because I lost touch?
It’s like something recently severed, and emotions are drifting inside of me.
When I was a little boy, I put myself in other’s shoes. I would mimic people around me, copy the way they walked, the way they sat or spoke. It would open a window into their minds. Empathic machines are coming, like children, learning.
Will I be able to outsource my feelings to emobots one day. I wouldn’t have to deal with shitty emotions anymore. Let the emobots process my crappy moods and re-infuse my body with good vibes.
Fleeting.
If emotionomics is to become a reality, would I ever be able to purchase a meal with the sensation of freedom that permeates through me today? Pay with a confused transactional smile. This is personal, and it’s not.
It’s all transparent. Let’s put our feelings on the table.”
The 47 Canal gallery presents the new exposition of Antoine Catala: “New Feelings” from September 28th to November 2nd. The French artist lives and works in New York and has exhibited extensively both in the US and abroad.
Antoine Catala shares the generation’s paradoxical mix of detached irony and cultivated sincerity. The “feelings” of his exhibition are new but surely threatened by the false intimacy of social media, or by the possibility of a future in which artificial intelligence supplants human experience.
The exposition exhibits a computer-animated video, some installations and flat screens.
47 Canal – 291 Grand Street, 2nd Floor – New York, NY 10002
