the machines that hold us (i) (2022)
in collaboration with joyce to, sara maston, and rebecca watson as a part of the NEL2R residency at critical mass centre for contemporary art
the machines that hold us (i) considers the relationship between humans, the environment, and our future with more-than-human entities in an age where collaboration with AIs and non-human animals is more urgent than ever. the project coalesces around the question, “how could our relationship with artificial intelligence unsettle master narratives and ‘static’ historical truths?”
the installation features two sculptures made of repurposed objects of technology that interact with one another via a central algorithm which materializes in the form of text, video, and computer-synthesized voice. the sculptures are a physical vessel that represents two individual machine-learning text generation models that will be trained by the Port Hope community over the course of our residency.
how do stories transform when passed through the bodies of a small town? what is artifact, what is artifice? does it matter in the end? the project attempts to undo the binaries that maintain a static truth, an aspect of machine learning that might function as queer strategy.