The myth of Icarus or the dangers of AI and Aristotle's rhetoric
This impressively executed exhibit consisted of two separate works of art, each illustrating one of the information & communication theories the students had learnt about during the theoretical courses. First, one artwork showcased the myth d'Icarus to illustrate the technological armaggedon which Wiener, the father of cybernetics feared may happen if machines took control of humans. In the myth of Icarus, his Father Daedalus, the creator of the Labyrinth warned his son about the dangers of flying too close to the sun because of its extreme heat as his wings are made of wax and would melt when in contact with the heat of the sun. This would result in his being precipitated into the sea and therefore to his death. The students transposed this myth to showcase the attraction but also the risks inherent in Wiener's cybernetics and the Artificial Intelligence to which it led. Icarus represents humans (in the story, he is symbolically called Homo-Numericus) who are getting ever closer to the sun (here by building intelligent machines). Daedalus is represented by Wiener.
The story was designed as a dialogue between Wiener (Daedalus) and his mythical son Homo Numericus (Icarus). 
The students set the scene by recalling Wiener's work for the Allied Armies during WWII where he built the machine "Predictor" with Julian Bigelow. This machine was aimed as providing the Allied armies with an anti-air defense system against German bomber planes. This work later paved the way later for the emergence of cybernetics as a discipline. In this imaginary dialogue, Wiener warns his son Homo Numericus who's also fascinated by his father's intelligent machines of their dangers, i.e. of flying too close to the sun (here pushing too far the automation of human intelligence). Fatally, despite his Dad's repeated warnings, Homo Numericus, like Icarus, under the influence of hubris, flew too high and close to the sun with the result that his wings were singed and began to be consumed. The continuous aspect of the burning wings reflects the fact that we do not yet know the end of the story: will humans be controlled by the machines they built or will they be able to control them? The future will tell. To illustrate the different stages of this evolution, a styrofoam carton was used as a base on which students drew different patterns and displayed images of the main characters (Icarus, Wiener, the sun). The carton was made of three levels, each representing a progression of the Artificial Intelligence adventure. The first level features Wiener, his face turned towards the second level while he warns his son, Homo-Numericus of the dangers of his fascinating invention. The bottom of this level features an image of the sea. On the second level, Icarus alias Homo-Numericus is shown flying ever higher towards the third level. At the bottom of this level is an image of an electronic board showing the transition of the society towards a digital world and a more and more advanced AI. On the third and highest level is the sun towards which Homo-Numericus was flying dangerously, this represents intelligent machines. It is for this reason that the students decided to represent the sun as a computer chip and wrote on the sun keywords that reflect the advances of AI such as "transhumanism, GAFA, governementality". At the bottom of the third level is a representation of digital data mapped in the cyberspace.

The second display illustrated how Aristotle's rhetoric can be used to manipulate the masses. The students constructed a display that recreated the Bauhaus effect of being surrounded at 360° by different sources of information. Mounted on a wooden construction, the central figure of Aristotle is surrounded by different information sources such that the receiver can avoid the propaganda effect of one-way unidirectional mass media. Aristotle's figure is surrounded on all sides by different emotions that humans can feel when confronted with a message: joy, fear, anger, sadness, ... This translates the fact that communication is often used to seduce one's audience by playing on different registers of the discourse (Aristotle's pathos, ethos, logo) which in turn engender different emotions. All this is explained in the video below and images of this exhibit can be seen in the photo gallery below.
The photo gallery below show pictures of some of the other arts projects designed by the students in this 2018 winter course.