Located between the primary school and the public library in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint district, there is a new kind of “luxurious” coworking space.
This space, known as a chathouse, has many of the elements found in traditional coworking offices. You tap on the computer keyboard and pause on the computer to have another person on the phone, someone else, to drink coffee.
However, there is one important difference. Chathouse is an AI chatbot coworking space, with everything made from cardboard, including people.
More specifically, Chathouse is an art exhibition by Brooklyn artist Nim Ben Leuven. There are a handful of cardboard robots working on computers through small motor-controlled movements. There is a sign offering a “only” desk space for $1,999 a month, with another sign labeling the space as “a gorgeous coworking space for chatbots.”
Ben-Reuven told TechCrunch that he built the exhibit as a way to bring humor to the fact that a large part of his work (which mainly focuses on graphic design and videography) is being pushed into the AI world. He added that as companies rely on AI tools instead, they have already been denied freelance jobs.
“It was like an expression of frustration in humor, so I don’t get too bitter about the industry changing so quickly under my nose and not wanting to be part of the shift,” Ben Reuben said. “So I was just trying to fight back with something stupid that could laugh at myself.”
He also said he wanted to make sure the exhibit wasn’t too negative because he didn’t think it would convey the right message. He said he needs to create blatantly negative art, push it into the corner and defend it on his own. He added that he gives the display a “lighter tone” and also helped him to be portrayed in viewers of all ages and in all opinions on AI.
Ben-Reuven and I were chatting at Pan Pan Vino Vino, a cafe across the street from the window display, when a group of people stopped to see the chat house. Three millennial women stopped to take a photo. A group of elementary school students stopped and asked their adult peers questions.
Ben Leuven also thought that despite what AI is doing to the industry he works, the situation remains lighter than some of the other fears and traumas happening in the world today.
“So, from a creative world perspective, AI seems like such a light thing compared to many other people like war, what’s going on in the world and the fear and trauma that exists,” he said.
Ben-Reuven has always used cardboard in his art. He created an environment for lifetimes at the airport terminal from graduate cardboard. During his freelance work over the past decade, he has been working on building these cardboard robots, or, as he calls them, “cardboard baby.” Therefore, using these cardboard robots was a natural choice for displays, but he was joking and joking that he also needed a reason to pull them out of the apartment.
“The nonpersistence of this cardboard thing and its ability to collapse at least in weight is what we feel is that AI is interacting with the creative industry,” he said. “People can make images of mid-journeys that look really good on Instagram and not finish a 12 year old, but at any level of scrutiny, it’s trash and I feel like you’re getting these cardboard things close enough.
He understands why consumers are attracted to the art generated by some AI. He compared it to junk food and to the fast acting serotonin hit that comes from being digested quickly before eating junk food.
The chat house is a temporary display as the buildings live waiting to be approved for renovations. Ben-Reuven hopes to maintain display until at least mid-May, and will move to a larger gallery if possible. He hopes to be able to add more of it, but he is worried about where he will put additional material in his apartment once the display is finished.
“I thought it was interesting to express this idea because I was typed in a ChatGPT prompt somewhere in the warehouse, so cute, creepy, baby robots are typing and working to take away as much electricity as Switzerland is using in a year,” says Ben-Reuven.
The chathouse is currently on display in the front window at 121 Norman Avenue in Brooklyn, near Greenpoint, New York.
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