Perfect Behaviors at OGR Torino Examines Algorithmic Life

The exhibition 'Perfect Behaviors. La vita ridisegnata dall’algoritmo' at OGR Torino, curated by Giorgio Olivero, runs until June 25. It features six artists exploring the impact of algorithms on daily life, including James Bridle, Paolo Cirio, Universal Everything, Eva and Franco Mattes, Geumhyung Jeong, and Brent Watanabe. Bridle's quote from his essay 'Nuova era oscura' frames the show. Works include Universal Everything's 'Tribes' (2019), a CGI video of human automata; Cirio's 'Sociality' (2018), using data from 20,000 patents; Mattes' 'The bots', where subjects recount work experiences amid makeup tutorials; Jeong's cyberpunk creatures from the Venice Biennale; Bridle's 'Autonomous trap 001'; and Watanabe's 'San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam', inserting a deer into GTA V. A performance by Lorem using AI to reinterpret 21 years of dream transcripts by Mirek Amendant Hardiker opened the show. The review criticizes the exhibition for lacking conceptual coherence, an overly polished aesthetic that clashes with OGR's industrial space, and a focus on 'wow effect' over substance. The seating arrangement during Lorem's performance obstructed subtitle reading. The reviewer questions whether the curatorial premise should have addressed collector readiness for non-glamorous art, noting that labels like New Media Art are outdated.