DEEPFAKE BODIES AS GENDER PHANTASMS
I have signed a book contract with Bloomsbury Academic Press to write a new book Deepfake Bodies: The Sexual Politics of AI. As part of research into the present and future body politics of Artificial Intelligence, I will start several collaborations
+ In China and Hong Kong, I continue my affiliation with the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Cultural Studies Division to carry out research about Chinese-specific models of AI and deepfake technology and how they are shaped by netizen creativity, techno-feminism and Internet governance. I am very lucky to be assisted by part-time Research Assistant Raegan who works ar CUHK.
+ I will also set up a new collaboration with PhD researcher and computational analyst and sociologist Vasileois Maltezos of the Unversity of Helsinki to do a big data study of deepfake content on social media. Vasilis helped us with a previous study of how Pepe the Frog imagery circulated on the LIHKG forum during Hong Kong’s social movements, which led to an article in Journal of Digital Social Research.
+ On September 4, 2024. Network Disruption Lab, Berlin, I will collaborate with Tatiana Bazichelli of NDL Berlin and cyber-feminist mathematician and researcher Irma Mastenbroek to give a talk and hold a workshop about deepfake bodies as sexualized and misogynist misinformation issued by radical-right groups. We will also work on techno-feminist models of AI ethics as a way to redeem deepfake creativity.
+ September-October 2024: I received a Bogliasco Foundation Grant for an Art Residency in Bogliasco, Italy. I will be residing in the town of Bogliasco,Liguria, while preparing a video installation that will invite gallery visitors to sit down in a metabolic chair, a gentle resting space for digesting artworks , and watch a video essay about deepfake bodies. What will this video installation be about? It will show a video-essay and evoke AI bodies discuss the fact that these bodies have been hijacked by hate-media, that this is the reason they look a little bit “off” and perhaps even offensive. Of course it is a platitude to say that pornography or even erotic arts offends people, but deepfake porn has reached an apex of exploitative and uncreative content. In short, we have to now fight to bring back the deepfake imagination as well as the potnetial of inclusive pornographic experiments. Please read further at Chaise Lounge