The Second Self
Frieze|Issue 243 - June - August 2024
On the tenth anniversary of Chris Marker’s pioneering experiment in machine intelligence
Paul Chan
The Second Self

After the 1983 release of his nearly uncategorizable film-essay Sans Soleil, the protean artist and filmmaker Chris Marker started developing a computer program called Dialector. He worked on the project for three years before abandoning it. In 2014, two years after Marker’s death, a small band of programmers and writers, as well as curator and artist Agnès de Cayeux, who knew Marker, resurrected Dialector and launched it online. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the work being reborn. Dialector functions like a chatbot: users ‘talk’ to it by typing on a keyboard and the program responds with text, sounds or 8-bit images of cats or owls. It’s tempting to think that the inspiration for Dialector may have come from another project he was working on during the same period: a 13-part television series on the influence of Ancient Greek thought and culture called The Owl’s Legacy (1989). Was Marker trying to reinvent the Platonic dialogue for the 21st century?

The second line of the source code for Dialector reads ‘the second self ’, which serves as the subtitle for the project. The phrase is a noteworthy choice for an artist whose fixation with privacy was arguably as famous as his work. Over the course of his 60-year career, Marker rarely granted interviews and refused to be photographed. In fact, ‘Chris Marker’ is just one of a handful of pseudonyms he went by – none of which can claim to be any more or less real than the name given to him at birth in 1921. This persistent depersonalization and need for anonymity has been interpreted variously as evidence of his media savvy, a habitual form of political protection he picked up during World War II, a personality quirk, and so on. To these theories, I wish to add one more: that he didn’t endorse the sanctity of life as a single self.

What would a poet, or an artist, want out of computation?

Esta historia es de la edición Issue 243 - June - August 2024 de Frieze.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición Issue 243 - June - August 2024 de Frieze.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE FRIEZEVer todo
I'm trying to follow my instinct: to have confidence and not get into my head too much about what other people are expecting.'
Frieze

I'm trying to follow my instinct: to have confidence and not get into my head too much about what other people are expecting.'

Conversation: Ahead of a solo show at London’s Cubitt Gallery, Marlene Smith speaks to Lubaina Himid about her time in the BLK Art Group, friendship and collaboration

time-read
8 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Tell It Slant
Frieze

Tell It Slant

Built Environment: Giovanna Silva on photographing history through unexpected architectural interventions

time-read
2 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Dean Sameshima
Frieze

Dean Sameshima

What does it mean to be alone? In Dean Sameshima’s recent body of work – 25 monochrome photographs of queer men in Berlin porn theatres with sumptuous black negative spaces and blinding white cinema screens – ‘alone’ is a complicated term.

time-read
2 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Nicole Wermers
Frieze

Nicole Wermers

Nicole Wermers’s Reclining Female #6 (2024) looks out over Glasgow.

time-read
2 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Greater Toronto Art 2024
Frieze

Greater Toronto Art 2024

Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada

time-read
2 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Echoes of the Brother Countries
Frieze

Echoes of the Brother Countries

In recent years, the former German Democratic Republic (DDR) has been the subject of a reappraisal that, while not seeking to redeem the stiflingly authoritarian state, has attempted to present a more nuanced overview of its social and cultural realities.

time-read
2 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Pierre Huyghe
Frieze

Pierre Huyghe

A pale tetra fish swims around a vast obsidian tank, while another bobs on its side at the top of the water, perhaps ailing from debilitating swim bladder disease (Circadian Dilemma [El Día del Ojo], 2017).

time-read
4 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Inward Yearnings
Frieze

Inward Yearnings

Essay: Rianna Jade Parker retraces the history of the Jamaican intuitives, a group of self-taught artists who ushered in a national form of artmaking mythologizing African traditions through religious divination and esteem-raising cultural work

time-read
8 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
The Promise of the Past
Frieze

The Promise of the Past

Built Environment: On the occasion of the ‘Tropical Modernism’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Derin Fadina examines the architectural movement’s exclusionary narratives

time-read
5 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Where Is Everyone?
Frieze

Where Is Everyone?

Built Environment: Minoru Nomata’s paintings ask why we obsess over unpeopled architecture

time-read
3 minutos  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024