AI pioneer Tobias Gutmann

Michal Florence Schorro

IN A NUTSHELL

Name: Tobias Gutmann
Number of people involved: 1
Website: tobiasgutmann.com
Important links: @tobiasgutmann
Course of ZHdK studies: Master Fine Arts
Graduation: 2020
Z-Kubator connection: What’s Next_Project participant 2022

October 2023

Tobias Gutmann’s artistic practice moves between different disciplines. His Face-o-mat project, with which he has toured exhibition spaces around the world in recent years, has made him known for his installation-based portrait drawing. The Face-o-mat is an “analog portrait machine”: a device in which people sit as models and the artist opposite draws abstract portraits of their faces within minutes.

Tobias Gutmann’s practice is also fundamentally concerned with encounters – not just between artists and their subjects, but between people in general, and more recently with artificial intelligence in his Sai Bot project. AI is something that causes uncertainty in the public and being an artist in general is also marked by it. Tobias gives us an insight into how he navigates these two fields:

Exhibition view «Tobias Gutmann & Sai Bot», 29.11.2022 to 17.03.2023 at Die Mobiliar, Bern. © Courtesy of the artist.

THE CORE OF YOUR WORK IS THE CREATION AND INVESTIGATION OF ENCOUNTERS. WHAT ROLE DOES THAT PLAY IN YOUR TWO PROJECTS WITH THE SAI BOT AND THE FACE-O-MAT? AND HOW ARE THEY RELATED?
The Face-o-mat was created in 2012 in Stockholm as a fun project during my studies and accompanied me to different cities. Then the videos went viral and I kept traveling. In the beginning, it was a performance for me with the ambition to draw abstract portraits of people and the finished images were evidence of those encounters. My interest then expanded to the space where the encounters took place because the atmosphere is such an important factor for them. After eight or nine years, I had an archive of portraits and associated photographs. At the time, I joked with my flatmate about how an artificial intelligence would probably handle this archive – a thought that seemed very absurd to me, because the idea of the Face-o-mat is precisely the analog encounter. What remained over time is my interest in capturing what I see behind a face – the sound of a person.

WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THE DIGITAL COMPONENT THAT SAI BOT BRINGS TO YOUR PRACTICE?
I use my subconscious, my intuition, to translate what I see into abstract drawings and the attraction behind Sai Bot was to digitise myself and wonder if that was even possible. I realised how much we already live in a digital world and can’t do without our devices, even if it’s just for 5 minutes to sit for a portrait. The question I asked myself was whether Sai Bot would replace me as an artist, or whether Sai would exist in parallel with me.

SO IS THE SAI BOT – READ BACKWARDS IT SPELLS TOBIAS, YOUR FIRST NAME – YOUR DIGITAL SELF AND TAKING OVER YOUR PRACTICE?
I figured that the interesting thing about Sai Bot is that I have created a character, a personality, that lives behind a screen and talks to us. Through the relationship and conversations with Sai Bot, I can think critically about issues around AI and digitalisation. I’m interested in questions like what it means to hand over artistic work to an artificial intelligence. What does it mean socially? What does it do to people? And what does an encounter with an AI look like?

RECENTLY, THE USE OF AI HAS BECOME A REAL HYPE, INCLUDING IN THE ARTS AND CREATIVE DISCIPLINES. WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO THIS FIELD?
It just so happened that the topic of artificial intelligence became such a hype when I got involved with it. Despite all my concerns about the technology, I tried to be playful with AI. I use it like a tool, like a paintbrush – I use AI to make my point. Ultimately, I’m not only interested in the drawing per se, but in what the encounter does to people. Once people feel that a drawing represents them, they are engaged in a different way and start to think about the encounter.

THE CURRENT SEMESTER THEME IS ABOUT UNCERTAINTY. THE USE OF AI IS A TOPIC THAT IS MOSTLY ASSOCIATED IN THE PUBLIC WITH UNCERTAINTY ON VARIOUS LEVELS. HAS YOUR WORK WITH THE SAI BOT CHANGED YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON THIS CONNECTION?
I think the question of how much artificial intelligence is used and when it becomes unhealthy is important. I’m interested in digital wellbeing, and there are many studies that show that the more time we spend behind screens, the more unstable we are in terms of our health and psychological wellbeing. On the one hand, we promise ourselves that technology is going to change the world and make our lives easier, and on the other hand, it is making people sick. I want people to ask themselves in their encounters with artificial intelligence: how much is good for me?

WHAT ROLE DOES UNCERTAINTY PLAY IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE IN GENERAL?
Uncertainty plays a very central role in being an artist and I have come to terms with it, but I try not to give it too much space. The Sai Bot project was an uncertain undertaking for a long time. The programming was complex and I often wondered what the message behind it was. Was it worth the effort and would it really enrich the project? Or if the analogue drawing was not enough? Funding was a big uncertainty.

HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THAT?
It was crucial to be able to reflect and develop the project within the What’s Next_Project programme. I was also fortunate to work with the AI startup Dazlus, which programmed Sai Bot. What’s Next_Project allowed me to fully dive into the project. I had a year, and no matter what happens after that, I could use that time for that, which opened up space for experimentation.