Being represented by data is like losing a part of yourself, 2024
StyleGAN2, Piper TTS
Click to load imageA screenshot from the video work showing a distorted Ada and the text "Cyberspace is not built for those like me, yet I thrive inside it."
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Click to load imageA screenshot from the video work showing a headless Ada and the text "I find that it is in between the conductors that we find healing."
To reduce website CO2e emissions, project images need to be manually loaded.
Click to load imageA screenshot from the video work showing a glitchy mess and the text "Being represented by data is like losing a part of yourself."
To reduce website CO2e emissions, project images need to be manually loaded.
Click to load imageA screenshot from the video work showing a distorted Ada and the text "To live as a bug that eats its way through the silicon."
To reduce website CO2e emissions, project images need to be manually loaded.
Click to load imageA screenshot from the video work showing a distorted Ada with two mouths and the text "Binaries are always changing their own definitions."
To reduce website CO2e emissions, project images need to be manually loaded.
About
"Being represented by data is like losing a part of yourself" is an AI generated video work, which reflects on the conflicting natures of gender, bodies, queerness, algorithms, data, glitches and artificial intelligence.
The visual side of the work is generated by an AI StyleGAN model, which has been trained on images from the in transitu project. The model is deliberately undertrained and used with parameters outside of the recommended standards to produce queer, glitchy expressions.
On the auditory side, the work features utterances from a voice cloning AI model overlaid onto a droning, broken electric soundscape. The AI model has been trained on recordings of my own voice, which fluctuates intentionally between her "masculine" and "feminine" voice.
The synthetic voice reads from a short text, which studies my experience as a trans woman through the language and technopolitics of the digital sphere.
The artwork considers how algorithms and data rely on categorical understandings to act upon the world, and how this methodology stands in stark contrast to how queer identities are inherently outside of category and binary perceptions. By actively misusing artificial intelligence technologies, the work seeks to discover queer modes of expression within the glitchiness of algorithmic spaces. With digital technologies becoming more and more ubiquitous, the video acts as a queer rebellion against the current paradigms of the binary.
"Being represented by data is like losing a part of yourself" uses a modified version of Derrick Schultz' StyleGAN2 setup.
The synthetic speech is produced with rmcpantoja's Piper setup.