Deep Fakes: Art and Its Double—the exhibition

Chapter 1 introduces the Deep Fakes: Art and Its Double exhibition as the origin and motivation for this publication, which opened in September 2021 at EPFL Pavilions in Lausanne, Switzerland. The exhibition also provides the basis for rethinking digital museology in the post-digital era. Its twenty-one installations demonstrated how cultural deep fakes and emerging technologies can be harnessed to transform how digital objects are interpreted by museums and how this, in turn, can provide participants with new and powerful encounters with world treasures. The chapter provides an overview of the exhibition and its key themes with detailed descriptions of its twenty-one installations accompanied by photographic documentation. This is followed by an outline of the curatorial vision for the exhibition, including an examination of some of the its precedents, inspirations and groundwork as well as issues confronting the curation of cultural deep fakes.