The Law of the Instrument

"The law of the instrument" is a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. As Abraham Maslow said in 1966, "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." The series is an invitation to meta-cognition, discussing the risk of over confidence in our human analytical capabilities resulting in species-chauvinism. The images are meant to invite the viewers to a subjective interpretation and to challenge their intellect and perception, but at the same time allow for a pure intuitive or emotional response. When I initiated the project my focus was an exploration of considerations regarding the technological singularity and strong artificial intelligence. It soon dawned on me that this future projection is really just an extension of the past 10.000 years of human cultural evolution, a period where the total biomass of the human population, their pets and their livestock has gone from 0,2% to 98% of the total biomass on earth. Maybe our analytical capability and our cultural development is just as much of an existential threat as a future AI gone astray may become? Hence the focus of the series shifted from treating biological vs. synthetic intelligence towards an exploration of the neocortex vs. the limbic system - analysis vs. intuition, and I am suggesting that the hammer in question in our day and age might be our bias towards our (limited) logical reasoning. I used objects I found in and around my house to create simple still lives that spoke to different parts of my consciousness, and that resonated with my thoughts on the subject.