Artificial Humans: Turning Machine Vision into art installation

In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms, machine learning, and synthetic intelligence, what does it mean to be human? This is the central question posed by Artificial Humans, a striking sculptural installation by Atelier Haute Cuisine, the Belgian design collective founded by Bernd Tyskens and Benny Conings.

Known for blending craft, concept, and intuition into sculptural lighting, objects, furniture, and site-specific installations, the duo approaches design like chefs, carefully selecting and combining ingredients to form a larger narrative. And in Artificial Humans, the recipe includes not only traditional materials and techniques but also artificial intelligence.

From Digital Image to Human Sculpture

The project began with an AI-generated image that caught the artists’ attention: a group of humanoid figures with hunched backs, seemingly mesmerized by something in their hand, eerily reminiscent of the way we often bend over our smartphones. The image didn’t just feel familiar; it felt prophetic. Was this AI showing us a reflection of who we are or who we’re becoming?

This question became the seed for the artwork.

A Dialogue Between Man and Machine

Rather than re-creating the image digitally, Atelier Haute Cuisine took a very human turn: using classical molding techniques, they created fiberglass replicas of their own bodies, embodying the AI’s vision in a way that is both deeply personal and physically grounded. In doing so, they bridged the gap between synthetic intelligence and tactile experience, between futuristic vision and present-day self-awareness.

The resulting figures are full-scale, life-like sculptures that carry a haunting familiarity. They seem to wander through urban space as part artwork, part mirror. Iinviting viewers to question their own relationship with technology.

A Modern Myth in the Making

Artificial Humans doesn't offer clear answers. Instead, it provokes. It asks whether we're already post-human in our behavior. Whether the devices we’ve built are shaping us more than we shape them. Whether evolution might now be driven by design, and if so, by whose hand?

Ultimately, the installation functions as both reflection and warning, expressing a tension that defines our times: the convergence of humanity and technology, of mind and machine, of craft and code.

www.haute-cuisine.be