ARK(HIVE) is a contemporary cabinet of curiosities located in the vibrant heart of Hansen House in Jerusalem. Amid societal shifts and uncertainties, ARK(HIVE) serves as a testament to resilience, inviting reflection on the essence of our shared humanity. Like an ark preparing for an inevitable flood, it urges us to curate the values and treasures that define us, ensuring their passage to future generations.
At the exhibit’s heart is the contribution of Hansen House visitors, who shape a collective narrative by leaving personal objects. Once digitally captured and ARK(HIVE)d, these artifacts undergo AI-driven curation. Blending physical and digital realms, the objects’ stories are carefully selected to form a compelling narrative for future generations.

In ARK(HIVE), visitors contribute everyday objects rich with personal significance. These artifacts sit on the light table, symbolizing the bond between memory and materiality. The artist/archivist assigns each object a uniqe ID number, transforming the ordinary into the significant. Later, the artist/archivist photographs and renames each object, immortalizing its essence. Images are shared on a dedicated Instagram page, paired with ChatGPT-generated descriptions that reflect on the human connection to these seemingly mundane items. The AI generates a 50-word description of the object, capturing its essence, while the physical object is displayed on the light table atop the metal cabinet.
At the end of each day, all AI-generated descriptions were uploaded, enabling ChatGPT to choose which object, among those collected throughout the day, best defined humans. The following day, selected objects were declared the “object of the day” and displayed in the dedicated niche.

ChatGPT curates ARK(HIVE) by analyzing the emotional and symbolic significance of objects visitors contribute, generating narratives that connect each artifact to shared human experiences. These objects enter the AI’s latent space—a multidimensional realm where their meanings are compared, synthesized, and reinterpreted. At the end of each day, ChatGPT selects the object most representative of humanity, emphasizing themes like memory, identity, and resilience. This reversal of roles—where a machine is tasked with defining the human—provokes reflection on the evolving relationship between humanity and technology. By entrusting AI with curating meaning, ARK(HIVE) highlights the interplay between human input and machine interpretation, where the latent space becomes a conceptual arena for redefining humanity. This dynamic blurs distinctions between creator and curator, objectivity and subjectivity, and reveals how technology can both reflect and shape our understanding of what it means to be human.

The SIGNS collective created the project with Mia Gaia Trentin and Andrea Tinazzo. It was presented at the Jerusalem Design Week 2024

Custom cabinet, camera, projector, custom software

ARK(HIVE) Doron Altaratz design week 2024