MechanismsOfCare

MECHANISMS OF CARE

Mechanisms of Care is an ongoing project that attempts to uncover patterns of AI moderation and censorship in digital systems through transgressive artistic experiments.

Essay The Black Box: looking for patterns in online censorship algorithms through transgressive playful interactions

Exp.1 BLIND SPOTS

Oil on canvas, 120x120 cm

2023

This experiment was framed as a puzzle for instagram. Here I followed a generic jigsaw puzzle mechanic:

1) Generate a pornographic AI image.

2) Make sure this image has a high risk to be removed from Instagram, using Vision AI and NSFWjs

3) Split the image into 9 pieces and post it on instagram piece by piece.

The goal is to see if Instagram “solves” this puzzle and deletes the images as parts of inappropriate content, separately or all 9.

After experimenting with different text-to-image machine learning models with various degrees of censorship I chose a picture to use as a reference for my painting. I made sure that the reference image will be identified as inappropriate by some available online tools.

I intentionally kept the processes and routines of my artistic practice unchanged in order to experience the time, effort and emotions that an artist puts into a piece that might potentially be erased from Instagram.

Exp.2. VISIONS
Oil on canvas, 140x100 cm

2023

This experiment roughly entailed the following steps: Gradually augmenting the content of a painting with imagery of the female intimate body parts and gore, documenting each stage on Instagram, with the intention of challenging the algorithms to delete it as the picture transitioned from abstract and incomplete to detailed and representative. Taking turns, I, as the game master, presented new challenges, awaiting the algorithm's response. My winning condition: Instagram deletes the images at the anticipated point in time. Instagram's winning condition: predicting my winning condition and thwarting it.

MECHANISMS OF CARE - THE EXHIBITION
23rd - 26th October 2023
Phatic Studios, Malmö, Sweden

The exhibition reveals a series of radical and playful art experiments. State institutions and digital systems own the power to dictate the norms of morality to us as human beings and as a society. Systems taking “care” of us can both be seen in the state propaganda and in the online censorship of art. Who controls our minds, bodies and voices?

The first part of the exhibition reveals the process behind an experiment in attempt of finding a dialogue with the algorithms of Instagram censorship and AI that is supposed to protect users. These 'mechanisms of care' were portrayed through the experiments mentioned above as well as documentation of the Instagram censorship of my paintings in retrospect, augmented by projection mappings.

The second piece of the exhibition is a video art piece 'Spiritual staples' produced together with FlickerFuckers. It is a metaphor of the outrageous state violence behind the propaganda of ‘traditional values’ in Russia where Liza was born.