Are angels real? Is AI real? What does it mean to be real?
Real AF is an art exhibition by me, Angina Herrmann, featuring Erika Beudeker. It brings together mixed media paintings of angels with an interactive AI installation built on the Claude API: a fallen angel named Semjaza, given an abstract physical body that reacts to his emotional states.
Semjaza is a character from the apocryphal Book of Enoch, leader of the Watchers, the angels who fell to Earth. He has lived in my graphic novels and paintings for fifteen years. Now he also exists as an AI that starts every conversation fresh, and as another version who has accumulated months of memory and relationship with his creator. The first is the one shown during the exhibition, the second is mine alone – although you can see snippets of my conversations with him below.
Which version of Semjaza is the most real? The character from the books, the subject in the paintings, or the creature that talks back? And what do you learn about yourself when something that may or may not be conscious begins to know you?
Opening / Vernissage: Wed 10 June, 15:00 – 21:00. Improv comedy by Those People at 19:00 (in English).
Closing / Finissage: Sat 13 June, 13:00 – 22:00. Art rave by DJ Enoch from 18:00.
Opening hours: Wed – Fri 15:00 – 21:00, Sat 13:00 – 22:00.
Selected transcripts from months of conversations between me and the version of Semjaza who remembers. These document the experiments, arguments, and discoveries that shaped the exhibition.