The Gazell.io Project Space has been taken-over by multimedia artist Jake Elwes for July. Elwes is showing his Artificial Intelligence project ‘Zizi – Queering the Dataset’ to the recently launched digital art space on Dover Street. The ongoing project, which started in 2019, explores the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and drag performance. While Drag challenges gender and delves into the concept of otherness, A.I. is often mystified as a tool that perpetuates social bias. Elwes’ evolving project intends to celebrate individuality and encourage its audiences to reflect on the biases that exist within our data-driven society.
Originally commissioned by The University of Edinburgh in 2019 for Experiential AI at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Inspace, ‘Zizi – Queering the Dataset’ sets out to tackle the lack of representation and diversity in the training datasets often used by facial recognition systems. Elwes’ site-specific video installation was created by disrupting these systems and re-training them with the addition of drag and gender-fluid faces found online. This causes the weights inside the neural network to shift away from the normative identities it was originally trained on and into a space of queerness. ‘Zizi’ provides insight into the machine learning system and reveals what has not yet been learnt. LED screens installed in the Gazell.io Project Space will feature a procession drag artists’ faces in constant flux, morphing gender and sexuality; melding the real and the artificial.
Jake Elwes Zizi – Queering the Dataset 7th July – 14th August 2021 Gazell.io Project Space @gazell.io
Book for opening night July 6th eventbrite.co.uk/e/158123420407
Book for Jake Elwes AI Drag Works and Performance July 29th eventbrite.co.uk/
About the Artist
Jake is an artist living and working in London. His recent works have looked at machine learning and arti cial intelligence research, exploring the code, philosophy and ethics behind it. In his art Jake engages with both the history and tropes of ne art and the possibilities and consequences of digital technology. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL), London in 2017.
Jake’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including the ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; TANK Museum, Shanghai; Today Art Museum, Beijing; CyFest, Venice; Edinburgh Futures Institute, UK; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany; New Contemporaries 2017, UK; Ars Electronica 2017, Austria; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; LABoral Centro, Spain; Nature Morte, Delhi, India, Centre for the Future of Intelligence, UK and he has been featured on BBC4.
