James Bridle: The artist creating dialogue between technology and nature

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James Bridle is an artist and writer. Their work emphasizes the technological as well as environmental aspects of art and the relationship between them. Their artworks and installations have been exhibited in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia and have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of visitors on the Internet. They have also collaborated with some of the most important art and design organizations in the world such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, Barbican, Artangel, Oslo Architecture Triennale, and Istanbul Design Biennial and have been honoured multiple times for their contribution to art and art theory - criticism. In recent years they have been living and working in Aegina.

Their presence as an author is becoming more and more pronounced as matters of technology -networks- and ecology in combination with the future of culture are increasingly drawing more attention. Magazines and newspapers such as Frieze, Wired, Domus, Cabinet, Atlantic, and many others, publish their articles, which are considered highly influential in the contemporary creative industries. Their book "New Dark Age" (2018), is dedicated to technology, knowledge and the so-called "end" of the future. The very next year they started a four-part series on BBC Radio 4 under the title "New Ways of Seeing" in which they analyze their theories on technology, politics and art in the modern era. The series was followed by the very recent publication of the book "Ways of Being" (Penguin / FSG), in 2022, which somewhat condenses their recent thoughts. The art criticism that results from their research, or New Aesthetic, has caused quite a stir in the art world and they have actually been listed in the 1.000 most influential people in London since 2007.

As for their practice, the creative extension of these ideas, Bridle unites politics with cyberspace philosophy and technological progress in unique research/installations. For example, in 2017 they collaborated with CERN as a Guest Artist and the following year they presented the project A State of Sin, a site-specific installation project that opens a discussion on randomness as opposed to the algorithmic, mathematically predictable reality that emerges from modern datafication. Through this work, Bridle attempted to juxtapose the new with the “old” way of thinking, broaching the creative nature of humans that is relatively random and the spectacular yet predictable and advanced approach of art through AI.

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They then redefined their work by emphasizing the relationship between ecology and artificial intelligence. As they mention in their book, they are troubled by the fact that artificial intelligence and datafied reality in general seem to be understood as something non-terrestrial, therefore non-natural. In their works, they are concerned with the relationship and the obvious interaction and interplay between the artificial and the natural. The earth is constantly being redefined due to the increased needs -from materials to infrastructure - of the increasingly advanced research centres or data centres, structures related to artificial intelligence in one way or another. Similarly, artificial intelligence clearly arises from the natural need of the individual to evolve in this aspect. New challenges arise that are solved in the physical space with the use of AI and eventually intervene in our life - as much as we will allow it - reshaping it in areas such as art, love etc.

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Thus, they also detect a political issue, which, according to them, arises from the understanding of the world as binary. Binary calculation lies behind the construction of society, and therefore the construction of hierarchies within it. When everyone and everything has to be assigned a role within a binary system, the relationships between things in that system immediately become hierarchical, because there is no other way to distinguish between them. For this reason, Bridle attempts to focus on nature or, more specifically, on what they call non-human politics e.g. the democracy of a hive. Thus, they want to better understand intelligence as defined in human and non-human consciousness.

In their latest work, thoughts regarding nature take shape. In Bridle Windmill 03 they recreate a traditional Greek windmill by reusing leftover materials from architectural works, and Aegina Battery is an electricity generator powered by seventy-two Greek lemons. Through these works, Bridle seeks the possibility of collaborating with the non-human world to find beneficial solutions to the ecological problems we face today, while also exploring the potential of collective education and action through art.

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What conclusions can we draw from observing an anthill? How harmful is it to create artificial intelligence that is inspired only by human systems? This definition of human intelligence has always shaped how we’ve tried to create artificial intelligence. What would happen if we thought like bees? What effect would an artificial combination of different types of political thought have on art and culture? The questions are many and posing them births more of them. Bridle is an active artist and critic - publishing their work, creating installations, giving lectures and participating in talk shows- who talks about a different way of thinking when it comes to creating, which can pave the way towards a society that thinks very differently while taking into account the new realities and the New Aesthetic*. 

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*The New Aesthetic is a term, coined by James Bridle, used to describe the ever-increasing presence of digital technology and the Internet in the natural world as well as the “intermingling” of the virtual and the physical.