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Event / Conversations With AI / Part 01 / Beyound The Body


 Jake Elwes
Amina Abbas-Nazari


Artist Talks and Open Discussion
2 February 2025 4-6pm

Conversations with AI is an ongoing series exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping artistic workflows and thought processes.

Curated by Rebecca Edwards and Chemist

This event explores the entanglements of AI systems and the body, interrogating the ways they perceive, classify, and engage with us at the level of meaning production. What does it mean for a body to be "understood" by AI-driven systems? In what ways are cultural and gendered ideas extracted and embedded into these systems—, how are they leveraged and weaponised?

Jake Elwes will give a performative lecture on their practice of demystifying, mapping and subverting technology. Exploring the aesthetics and ethics of machine learning systems since the very first generative AI models in 2016, Jake’s work calls for us to challenge who builds these systems and for what purpose.

Amina Abbas Nazari will present their practice led research project titled Speculative Voicing, an ongoing investigation of sonic materiality in human and synthetic voice communication, especially in conjunction with AI and other emerging technologies

An open conversation between the artists and curators Ariel Caine and Rebecca Edwards will delve into the machine ecologies surrounding AI, examining the interconnected networks of algorithms and data, and the extractive forces of big tech. Unpacking the borders beyond the body to reconsider spirituality and the mind, the conversation will interrogate the fixed perimeters of AI latent space and ask how it can become more fluid and dynamic. As we redefine our understanding of the body through glitching and neuroqueering terminologies, we’ll consider what role humans play in these chains of agency, and how these roles can be reshaped as decision-making shifts to machines.


Amina Abbas-Nazari is a practicing designer, researcher, and vocal performer who has researched the voice in conjunction with emerging technology since 2008. She recently completed a Techne-funded PhD in the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art, investigating the sound and sounding of voices in artificially intelligent machine listening and conversational systems, having previously studied RCA MA Design Interactions.

Their work has been presented internationally including the London Design Festival, Design Museum, Barbican Centre, V&A, Lisson Gallery London, Milan Furniture Fair, Venice Architecture Biennial, Critical Media Lab, Switzerland, Litost Gallery, Prague, Pedreira, Portugal and Harvard University, America. She has performed internationally with choirs and regularly collaborates with artists as an experimental vocalist.

https://speculativevoicing.co.uk/


Jake Elwes (b.1993, UK) is an artist, hacker, radical faerie and researcher living in London. Across projects that encompass moving-image installation, sound and performance, Jake’s work finds unusual ways of demystifying, mapping and subverting technology. Their work searches for poetry and narrative in the successes and failures of digital systems. Works include deepfake drag in The Zizi Project, glitching oppressive algorithms in Machine Learning Porn and reframing AI generated marsh birds back into nature in CUSP. They have been making art exploring the aesthetics and ethics of machine learning systems since the very first generative AI models in 2016. Jake’s work also calls for us to challenge who builds these systems and for what purpose, and whether we as artists and queers can reclaim these technologies to build our own digital utopias.

Jake studied at The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (2013-17) and their work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Somerset House, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Frankfurter Kunstverein; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Honor Fraser Gallery, LA; Fundacion Telefonica Museum, Madrid; Ars Electronica, Austria; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Sculpture in the City, London; Science Gallery Dublin; RMIT Gallery, Melbourne; Onassis Foundation, Athens; E-WERK Freiburg, Germany; Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin; Nature Morte, Delhi; Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Cambridge and they have been featured on ZDF aspekte, ARD ttt (DE), BBC Radio 4 Front Row, and BBC1’s Kill Your TV - History of Video Art (UK).

https://www.jakeelwes.com/

Rebecca Edwards is a London based curator, writer and producer. Her interests include cultivating experimental curatorial methods, interweaving fluid approaches to production, dissemination and representation of artwork, and exploring the nested fields of technology, digital aesthetics and internet culture. Rebecca was the curator at arebyte from 2017 - 2024. She is currently a co-host of Future Artefacts Podcast and access worker for artist Petra Szemán.

https://rebeccaedwards.xyz/

 
Exhibition Hours
Fri-Sat 12:00-18:00
Sun 12:00-16:00