(Art-In-Progress) I received a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship to do an artist residency in the coastal town of Bogliasco, Italy. I stayed there in the early Fall of 2024 and prepared an art installation that was influenced by its phenomenal scenery.
I want to make a video installation and want to create a zone where people can find comfort and respite from the harsh world of AI and deepfake misinformation, sexual abuse and data theft.
I thought of a chaise lounge surrounded by media-screens-on-wheels, that could be rolled around easily be gallery visitors. People could decide to push the screens away or pull them closer, depending on their state of mind during the gallery visit.
People may arrive in the gallery already somewhat exhausted from life, from ongoing art visits, or specifically their social media immersion. This is not to say that art should just provide a resting space for people, but it would be good if they could log off, sit down and drift casually or more intensely amongst art works. Maybe if visitors could rest in a chaise lounge, it would be easier to restore one’s senses and perhaps enjoy the art works.
The problem with many deepfakes as we see them circulate on social media is that we have become numb to them. The technology, which is used to synthesize facial videos or voice tracks onto other scenes, has been appropriated to become an engine of exploitative hate-media. This “deepfake norm” has become our common perception of the technology, and we may still be prompted to look at them even if we known they are toxic fakes. Many people have lost trust in social media representations and may try to avoid them, but the deepfakes may still invade our worlds. Hence I have been thinking of ways to to re-appropraite the technology to restore and try out different registers of affect.
Hence I will use the chaise lounge to show deepfakes that evoke different types of reactions, associations and emotions. For instance, I have seen examples of deepfake technology being used as “psycho-therapy” for those who have lost a beloved through death. The deepfake is used to represent the dead beloved and a performer is hired to enact conversations with the bereft person. A very good example of how this may work is Roshan Nejal’s documentary “Deepfake Therapy” (2021), which documents an artwork, in which he adopted deepfake technology after he lost his grandmother, experienced deep grief and wanted to speak to her by way of prayers according to his Hindu religion. He began experimenting with deepfake videos so he could have a simulated moment of contact with her. The documentary shows only a small clip of this encounter, but as viewers we can immediately witness the glowing personality of the grandmother and the special bond she had with Nejal. Nejal was satisfied with his sessions and also decided to share benefits with other people by hosting therapy sessions in collaboration with a group of therapists in the Netherlands. As shown in the documentary, the deepfake technology was used to set up ‘therapy sessions’ for people who had recently experienced the death of a beloved.(1)
What if we were sitting in this chair and would be able to have a visit from a beloved dead person and to have a spirited conversation with a person? Or, as I started to walk along the Ligurian coast and was able to take many swims there, together with the other artists, I thought of deepfaking hybrid creatures of humans and sea animals. I was able to hear and feel the sea’s humidity and incredible roar constantly, while I also stared at swimmers in the small pebbly beach of Bogliasco. Then I conceived of the idea to rethink futuristic deepfake bodies as wet and playful ‘mythical’ beings with healing qualities.
These deepfake creatures are inspired by the Greek mythology of Nereids as 50 water-nymphs who were seen as ‘escorts’ protected the different qualities of the sea, such as calming the sea, enabling the spawning the fish, creating sea-foam, looking after the sea’s ‘bounty’ by mixing water with brine, enabling a safe voyage for fisher(wo)men, etc. For instance there is the Nereid, Erato, one of the 50 Nereids. Her name means ‘the awakener of desire’ and she is part of a group of 50 who all together protect the ocean.
If one would search online for common imagery or AI generated sea nymphs or mermaids, one would find very clichéd animated drawings of cute curvy girls with big eyes and fish tails.
This is almost as sad and predictable as the common exploitative images of deepfake porn, in which celebrities and public figures who have gorgeous faces, are remixed onto the pedestrian sex scenes of commercial pornography. Hence the task upon me is to create alluring swimming nymphs, or beach-dwellers figures of desire that steer away from these platitudes that have hijacked our imagination.
Thus I came up with the idea of filming human swimmers and deepfaking them into queer ‘creatures’ or ‘critters,’ as I watched people along the coast. I will organize filming sessions with people’s permission and think about the kind of critters or creatures they would like to become.
Here is my script for the future installation:
A hybrid human-sea creature who looks like a gender-fluid person (Nereid) is swimming and getting out of the water, dries in the sun.
The Nereid slowly transforms and puts on a sexy suit, sits down on the stairs and looks at the water.
As Nereid, this person is part of a pack of 50 “wet ones,” sea creatures who maintain the vibrancy of the water, as well as helps humans traverse the oceans.
These hybrid creatures are extraordinary and benign, making a specific type of sound or song, and are very alluring and beautiful to be with.
These creatures are rare, but when one has the opportunity to gaze at them, one would slowly feel becoming-one with the water spirit. The the gazing human would get out of their rêverie and take a dip in the water.
After a dip in the water, the Nereid will come back out and get dressed in their suits and go on with their lives.
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references
(1) Nejal, Roshan (2020) Deepfake Therapy, 25 October, Online documentary Available at https://www.2doc.nl/documentaires/2020/10/deepfake-therapy.html (Accessed 24 july, 2024)