In late May, two British women who were visiting Corfu for a “pole dancing festival” were filmed in action on the terrace of the historic Palace of St Michael and St George, built as the administrative headquarters during the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands 1814-1864. Today, the building houses Greece’s only Museum of Asian Art and the Municipal Art Gallery. It is frequently used for concerts and exhibitions.
When the video of the dancing went viral, residents and cultural institutions objected to what they described as an offence to the cultural heritage, a nationwide concern about the protection and proper use of monuments.
The Greek ministry of culture said the dancing was in breach of laws protecting historic sites, and the women and the cameraman were put on trial two days later. Despite apologising for their behaviour, in which they said they were misled by the operator of the video, they were given a suspended six-month sentenceand fined.
The incident in Corfu is not isolated.
The chief focus for disputed use of archaeological and historical sites is, predictably, the Acropolis in Athens, the archetypal symbol of Greek classical culture.
Last month, the Athens prosecutor ordered an investigation into an event in which unauthorised illuminated drones formed a giant rotating Adidas shoe on top of the Parthenon temple in the night sky.
The event was condemned by politicians as “an offensive commercialisation of the core of our cultural heritage”, but it is not only commercial interests which have provoked objections. Earlier in the year the ministry of culture refused permission for the leading Greek film-maker, Yorgos Lanthimos, who has been nominated five times for Oscar awards, to film on the Acropolis.
In 2017 the Central Archaeological Council rejected a request from fashion house Gucci to hold a show for its 2018 couture collection on the Acropolis. The rejection stated that, as a world heritage symbol, the Acropolis was not an appropriate site for a commercial activity.
The director of the Acropolis Museum said the site would be “degraded” if used as a “backdrop” for a “fashion runway”, but this view was disputed by the head of the Greek Tourism Confederation, who argued that the Gucci event was sufficiently high-profile and would have showcased the Acropolis.
On a somewhat different level from pole dancing and commercial activity, the Acropolis was last year at the centre of a dispute about the use of “Sophia”, a humanoid artificial intelligence (AI) robot, which (or should that be “who”?) appeared, dressed in classical Greek costume, as part of a technology conference.
The robot allegedly speaks 20 languages, has given television interviews (including Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan) and is a citizen of Saudi Arabia.
The newspaper Athens Voice described Sophia as “an innovation ambassador for the United Nations development programme”. In 2017 she held a conversation with the deputy secretary-general of the United Nations.
Described as “the most advanced humanoid artificial intelligence robot” with “an IQ higher than Einstein”, Sophia was conceived (if that is the correct term) in Hong Kong on St Valentine’s Day 2016 and is said to merge the attributes of the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti, Audrey Hepburn and the inventor’s wife. What a claim.
No one seems to have disputed Sophia’s right to appear in Greek costume or in the environs of classical Athens. But her existence highlights the Greek capacity for AI invention, since Greek scientists have made equally impressive strides in robot and AI technology.
Last year the Blueprint for Greece’s AI Transformation was launched, aiming to incorporate AI know-how into the public service. At the same time, Greece hosted the World Robot Olympiad.
This is nothing new to the Greek mind.
Homer imagined automata in the Iliad, and it would be a gross impertinence on the part of modern science to suggest that its current use of AI was in some way an advance on the Antikythera Mechanism, described as “the oldest known example of an analogue computer”, probably built in the second century BC.
Ironically, Sophia was anticipated as a Greek miracle 60 years ago when Lawrence Durrell, in his novel Nunquam (1970), imagined a robot, Iolanthe, which was based on Pat, a speaking computer he had seen in Edinburgh in 1962.
If Durrell were alive today, he would laugh at the idea that Sophia, a 21st-century robot, using the Greek name for “wisdom”, could appear on the Acropolis – where, in the 1960s, his own Iolanthe had made love, fictionally.
Whether AI can develop a robot that could accomplish pole dancing while conversing with an official of the United Nations is yet to be seen.
