Does AI Dream of Gender?

Madina Mahomedova, Frederik De Bleser

‘Does AI Dream of Gender?’ is an interactive audio-visual installation that explores the topic of gender performativity in digital space. Created using image-to-image translation AI algorithms, this project is a visual research and study of how AI understands the idea of gender, based simply on open-source photo databases taken from the internet.

Video documentation was recorded during the first show in Antwerp, Belgium on July 2022.

The main inspirations behind this project are ideas of post- and trans- humanism as proposed by Donna Hawaray in her infamous ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ essay and Jaques Lacan’s concept of the ‘mirror stage'. When does one understand, see, and form its gender? How do the images surrounding us in virtual and physical worlds form our understanding of gender and the image after which we create our own gender(s)? The goal of this installation is not to answer those questions but pose them and many others to the viewer.

Created by Madina Mahomedova as part of her BA graduation project for the PJATK (Warsaw, Poland) New Media Art department, in collaboration with the researchers from The Aglorithmic Gaze. Madina is an artist from Lviv, Ukraine. In her work, she focuses on ideas of gender performativity & gender fluidity in digital spaces. At present, Madina is based in Brussels, Belgium.

Created under the conceptual supervision of Mgr. Klaudiusz Ślusarczyk and technical supervision of teacher & researcher Frederik De Bleser. Presented in Antwerp in July '22 and at the WRO Media Art Biennale in Wrocław, Poland in May '23.

Does AI Dream of Gender?

Madina Mahomedova, Frederik De Bleser

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