Project Description
The Meaning of Life. Origin and Destiny. ChatGPT-4o. 2025
Artificial Intelligence. ChatGPT-4o. Laser Projector. Sound
Infinite Loop
2025
(Excerpt)
Dimensions variable
This work is composed of 1 laser display
The Meaning of Life is an artistic work in which a laser display projects eleven texts generated by artificial intelligence. These texts attempt to answer our most fundamental questions: the meaning of life, happiness, consciousness, mortality, infinity, God…
Like philosophy, AI offers no fixed truth. Its answers evolve with each update (GPT-4, GPT-5, GPT-6…), shaped by its time, its data, and its own technical capacities. What AI asserts today may be contradicted tomorrow. It becomes a metaphor for the human quest for meaning: unstable, infinite, in perpetual recomposition.
The Meaning of Life follows in the tradition of Conceptual Art. Here, meaning is neither given nor permanent. It emerges from the moment and the perception of each viewer. The work enters into dialogue with “One and Three Chairs” by Joseph Kosuth, which questions the very nature of knowledge, and “Today” by On Kawara, where time becomes both subject and material.
What if thinking was no longer exclusive to humans? If an artificial intelligence, without consciousness, creates its own visions of existence, what is left of our singularity? The work does not answer. It suspends the question, like an enigma left open to our perception.
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Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? These questions have haunted humanity since the dawn of consciousness. They are not just philosophical inquiries but existential imperatives that shape our understanding of life itself.
Immanuel Kant argued that while we seek answers about our origin and destiny, the limits of human reason prevent us from attaining absolute knowledge. He wrote, “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe… the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” Kant suggested that while science might explain our physical origins, the deeper question of purpose must be found within moral and existential reflection.
In contrast, Friedrich Nietzsche took a radical stance, rejecting predefined destinies or grand cosmic narratives. He wrote, “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman, a rope over an abyss.” For Nietzsche, our destiny is not dictated by gods or fate, but by our own capacity to transcend limits, create values, and forge meaning through struggle and self-overcoming.
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D’où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ? Ces questions hantent l’humanité depuis l’aube de la conscience. Elles ne sont pas seulement des interrogations philosophiques, mais des impératifs existentiels qui façonnent notre compréhension de la vie elle-même.
Immanuel Kant affirmait que, bien que nous cherchions des réponses sur notre origine et notre destinée, les limites de la raison humaine nous empêchent d’accéder à une connaissance absolue. Il écrivait : « Deux choses remplissent l’esprit d’une admiration et d’un respect toujours nouveaux et croissants… le ciel étoilé au-dessus de moi et la loi morale en moi. » Pour Kant, si la science peut expliquer notre origine physique, la question plus profonde du but de l’existence se trouve dans la réflexion morale et existentielle.
À l’inverse, Friedrich Nietzsche adoptait une approche radicale, rejetant les destinées prédéfinies et les grands récits cosmiques. Il écrivait : « L’homme est une corde tendue entre l’animal et le Surhomme, une corde au-dessus d’un abîme. » Pour Nietzsche, notre destinée ne nous est pas imposée par des dieux ou par le destin, mais dépend de notre capacité à transcender nos limites, à créer nos propres valeurs et à donner un sens à l’existence à travers la lutte et le dépassement de soi.