A 3-channel video installation (in-progress) featuring Dr. Jacobs, scholar in Sexuality Studies, a drag persona enacted by Katrien Jacobs, who has been selected by the AIL University to synthesize a younger version of himself as “AI professor.” The AI professor would be an attractive and spirited synthetic being who would lecture and attract students of the future. As Dr. Jacobs sets out to do so, a mishap occurs and the cloned AI professor disappears from the MaCi lab. We follow Dr. Jacobs on a voyage to find his AI professor close to the surrounding waters.
The installation and sci-fi story take inspiration from ancient Chinese and Greek myths and visuals of aquatic hybrid creatures, such as the Nereids,”The Wet Ones,” tiny nymphs who purify waters and travel in packs. The story also comments on our transforming AI bodies, sex and creativity, while referencing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which a a cutting-edge scientist and his flawed creation trail and stalk each other in the Alpine mountain regions
Dr. Jacobs accompanied by his mythic queer water-creature
This fictional and artistic project complements my forthcoming pessimistic book, Deepfake bodies: The Sexual Politics of AI.
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Two short videos to explain my AI process:
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Screen 1 (SMALL Left) Dr. Jacobs narrates his experiences of creating an AI professor for the Afterglow programme of AIG university, This programme recruits ageing professors of excellence to retire while synthezing their individual contribnutions and knowlegde domains into full-body robotic humanoid scholars.
Screen 2 (SMALL Right) Dr. Jacobs trails his creation who has escaped from the MaCi lab, a young and queer synthetic human named Jeli Jacobs, who is residing somewhere along the Isère river.
Screen 3 (LARGE MIddle) The life of aquatic humanoids who swim and protect the oceans while seeking out each other through erotic gestures. The middle screen is positioned in front of a chaise longue in which visitors can recline and rest to take in to water scenery.
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BACKGROUND (PHASE 1 of the project)
In 2024 I received a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship to do an artist residency in the coastal town of Bogliasco, Italy. I made a video about Phase 1 of the art project.
We stayed in the Bogliasco Center’s phenomenal old mansion right next to the Ligurian coast.
I started to walk along the coast and was able to take many swims there, together with the other visiting artists. I was able to hear and feel the sea’s humidity and incredible roar constantly, while I also staring at many swimmers in the small pebbly beach of Bogliasco. I conceived of the idea to rethink futuristic AI bodies as wet and playful ‘mythical’ water-beings with healing qualities.
The Wet Ones are hybrid creatures inspired by different myths and histories that I keep finding as I develop the project. First of all, there is 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.
In Belgium, an exhibition and formidable catalogue entitled Hybrids: Composite Creatures from Fables. Myths and Legends (Hopper & Fuchs, 2024) examines the topic of composite human-animal creatures within different cultural histories. In the introductory essay by Leen Huet, we see examples of such creatures in Jacob Van Maerlant’s medieval encyclopedia (1340-1350 of fauna and flora, entitled Der Nature Bloeme. There is an example of a sea-monk, a sea-deer and of course mermaids, who according to Van Maerlant are repulsive and harmful creatures with sharp claws and fish scales. They lure seamen with their beautiful voices and music, then drown them and eat them. Seamen are aware of their presence and cover or put plugs in their ears when they hear them.(p. 17)
These creatures were also as reproduced as little objects and sold internationally for the Wunderkammer (“Room of Wonders”) where functionaries and entrepreneurs would collect objects and curiosities, including animal-skeletons, fossils, stones, shells, drawings from conquests around the world. The city of Antwerp, Belgium, was an important industrial hub in the 16th century that also supported this trade. For instance, there were little mermaids made by Japanese Fishermen based on their belief in Ningyo “humanfish”and consisting of actual fish skeletons and pieces as well as paper maché. The Antwerp merchant and maker of maps, Abraham Ortelius, also possessed one of these Wunderkammers and below is a 1655 drawing of one in Copenhagen.
My work wants to interrogatre homogenizing AI imaginaries. 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 template-bodies of advertising and commercial pornography.
But it is also reassuring to know that people are interested in using GenAI to generate the less predictable and consumable composites. An example of given by Gabriele de Seta in his essay “An algorithmic folklore: Vernacular creativity in times of everyday automation” when people using genAI collectively produced a monstrous figure ‘The Crungus’ after somebody posted one on Twitter. According to de Seta, it transformed from an individual creation to a collective myth-making effort. More and more Twitter user shared their own experimentations with different prompts across models, such as, ‘friendly crungus’, ‘soft crungus’, ‘crungus birth’, ‘Baby Crungus’, or ‘anti-crungus political poster’ adding both detail and legitimacy to the emerging Crungus myth. (1)
Hence the task upon me is to create queer and erratic swimming creatures that steer away from AI platitudes that have hijacked our imagination. One other example would be the East-Asian myths of sea-hybrids, such as Hong Kong’s Lo-Ting– a creature with human limbs and fish-like head and torso.
Or there is the Japanese mythic reptile-figure Nure-Onna (Wet Woman) who was also turned into animation by the Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen in his animations, Night March of Hundred Monsters.
Details from Ho Tzu Nyen’s catalogue of Night March of Hundred Monsters
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(1) Gabriele de Seta, “An algorithmic folklore: Vernacular creativity in times of everyday automation.” In C. Arkenbout & I. Galip (Eds.), Critical meme reader III: Breaking the meme. Institute of Network Cultures, 233-253.