Our world is increasingly relying on generative artificial intelligence (AI) for our daily tasks, but what does it look like to use it for the sake of art? Ten leading contemporary artists \u2013 from Australia and across the world \u2013 attempt to grapple with this question in the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia\u2019s major summer exhibition Data Dreams: Art and AI.<\/p>\n
According to MCA curator Anna Davis, the landmark exhibition, which is part of the Sydney International Art Series 2025\u20132026, explores the multi-faceted nature of how artists are having conversations with the emerging world of AI through visual media like films, imagery and sculptures.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really about looking at what artists are doing right now and bringing together a diversity of perspectives and approaches to using artificial intelligence as well as looking at it as a subject of critique,\u201d says Davis, who brought the exhibition to life alongside co-curators Jane Devery and Tim Riley Walsh.<\/p>\n
The exhibition space has undergone a complete transformation. The usual streams of bright light from Circular Quay have been replaced with shadowy backdrops onto which hallucinatory images and vivid films are projected. The space becomes a physical portal into a virtual dream state.<\/p>\n
In one of the first rooms, an immersive part-filmed, part AI-generated video installation \u2013 The Finesse by London-born Tamil artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas \u2013 seats viewers among virtual foliage from the jungles of northern Sri Lanka while they learn about the country\u2019s tumultuous political history. The film loops as an AI scrapes social media in real time to auto-edit the footage, including a generated clip of a Kim Kardashian-like figure discussing the difficulties of living in a post-truth world.<\/p>\n
Another highlight is French artist Fabien Giraud\u2019s The Feral: Epoch 1, a film entirely shot and edited by AI, making its world premiere at the exhibition. The work is the first instalment in a 1000-year-long project that will continue to be created by human artists over 32 generations.<\/p>\n
\u201cFabien describes the AI system as being like an infant,\u201d says Davis, \u201cSo, there\u2019s this notion that we are, in a sense, the parents of these AI systems that humans have created\u201d.<\/p>\n
The project rests on speculation and imagination instead of certainty. \u201cNo one knows what the work will look like in the future. That is the experiment \u2026 Fabien has also suggested that AI may ultimately serve as a witness to humanity when we no longer exist on this planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
In contrast, Palawa, Trawlwoolway woman Angie Abdilla, an artist and academic researching the cultural governance of AI at the Australian National University, focuses on the history of Indigenous knowledge systems in her film installation Meditation on Country, where viewers lie on the ground beneath a simulated sky.<\/p>\n
Working with Yuwaalaraay Elder Ghillar Michael Anderson, Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Brian Schmidt and Gamilaraay astrophysicist Katie Noon, Abdilla uses machine learning software to illustrate the disjunct between how Indigenous people have mapped ancestral timelines in comparison to Western understandings of astrophysics and evolution.<\/p>\n
The exhibition also addresses the human costs of using and training AI. Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler\u2019s Anatomy of an AI System details an exhaustive list of the resources and supply chains involved in sustaining AI platforms, while Hito Steyerl\u2019s Mechanical Kurds explores how Kurdish refugees are employed to train AI for use in warfare.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty much everyone is using some form of AI at the moment, whether they like it or not,\u201d says Davis of Steyerl\u2019s work. \u201cBut there\u2019s a huge underbelly of hidden human labour, sometimes called \u2018ghost labour\u2019, beneath many of these seemingly autonomous computer systems.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MCA is offering exhibition-related programs to shed light on the way AI is being used in art.<\/p>\n
The exhibition guide looks a little different, too. As well as guided tours and expert talks, for the first time at the MCA, visitors can use Artbot on your own devices to \u201ctalk with the exhibition\u201d by asking questions about the art. Trained on the MCA\u2019s knowledge base, the AI responds in natural language, offering broader insights into the works.<\/p>\n
Neither endorsing nor shunning the increasingly prevalent technology, Data Dreams recognises our engagement with AI is likely here to stay. As Davis says: \u201cThere\u2019s enormous complexity in how we are currently using and thinking about AI. Contemporary artists are not only working with these technologies, they are also shaping the conversation around them, and we wanted to reflect that within the exhibition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Broadsheet is a proud media partner of Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Data Dreams: Art and AI<\/a> is on until April 27, 2026.<\/p>\n
![\"Broadsheet](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/MCA001_Logoset_Wordmark_CMYK_Black_Large.jpg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n