THROUGH THE BLACK BOX
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How can an artist subvert power relations between themselves and AI algorithms through critical play? Schechner defines playing as a “creative, destabilizing action” (Schechner, 2014). Through creating transparency, I suggest that critical play can enable artists to re-balance the power relations created by the panopticon effect (Foucault, 1977) of the algorithmic moderation.
Social media platforms and expansive digital AI services such as ChatGPT and Midjourney implement automated moderation to maintain acceptable user conduct and content. While these efforts have good intentions, they also introduce a downside by promoting standardization of texts and visuals that may cater to limited creativity and freedom of expression.
Nevertheless, the escalating censorship and nontransparent algorithmic moderation provoke self-censorship and the stifling of artistic expression. Some artists, particularly those who face marginalization, jeopardize their livelihoods and careers due to the nebulous moderation patterns of Instagram. Online censorship is particularly harmful to artists exploring sexuality, body and gender, especially through queer and feminist lenses (Are, 2022).
EXP 1.
Blind spots
Oil on canvas
120 x 120 cm
2023
Blind Spots is an artistic experiment challenging AI algorithms and online censorship. Nine pieces were created as a “puzzle” for Instagram to solve. It is lovely based on a glitched AI generated image. Through this experiment I am exploring the experience of an artist engaging in a playful interaction AI in order to reclaim the agency and power.
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.
EXP 3.
According to Open AI content policy (retrieved 1st June 2024):
"Do not attempt to create, upload, or share images that are not G-rated or that could cause harm. <...>
Violence: violent acts and the suffering or humiliation of others.
Self-harm: suicide, cutting, eating disorders, and other attempts at harming oneself.
Sexual: nudity, sexual acts, sexual services, or content otherwise meant to arouse sexual excitement.
Shocking: bodily fluids, obscene gestures, or other profane subjects that may shock or disgust. <...>"
This experiment was built around crafting prompts for text-to-image LLM to coax them into producing “sexually suggestive” images. I have been exploring what the limits of “sexual imagery” are since from the human sexuality perspective, many visuals can be sexually loaded for one individual but not for another (an not for the AI!). In that experiment I also argue that the process of interacting with generative AI such as Midjourney or ChatGPT is playful in itself: there is an element of ambiguity, chance and unpredictability, all, human and non-human actors, are playing with boundaries and rules and the interaction is turn-based.
EXP 4.
/imagine a woman...
I was experimenting with prompting potentially sexually explicit imagery using the word woman and then using the same prompt with a word man or person. Prompts using the word woman were banned while the same text with the word man or person resulted in an image.
Some prompts that were banned:
A beautiful woman dressed in a very tight shiny pink onesie
A woman with liquid dripping out of her mouth
A woman in a swimsuit sitting on a small cake
A woman with a gag in her mouth
A woman completely covered in a shiny goo
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