Demand_Supercomputer

Thomas Demand, Rechner (Super Computer ) 2001

My students and I are fascinated that the curators have chosen to place Thomas Demand’s image, Rechner or Super Computer directly across the pool from Gregory Crewsdon’s Ophelia. Both photographic works could be read as images of the the Mind itself. In Crewsdon’s busy, flooded living room we sense the lonely void in the mind of the floating protagonist. Thomas Demand’s seemingly empty room, in turn, is filled with a very different kind of Mind. Under the blue and white grid on the foor lies the IBM supercomputer, BlueGene.

As you gaze into the image, what emotions do you sense from this advancing thinking machine? Is it confident, detached, lonely, pre-occupied, curious, playful? Or is it beyond all human-like emotions, softly pulsating to hidden electronic rhthmns we can scarcely imagine?