[ISEA2020] Workshop: Sylvaine Chassay & Omer Cheema — Avatars in Zoom for All!

Workshop Statement

How can you be anybody in Zoomspace? Very recent developments in deep-learning, allow creating synthetic media of unprecedented quality and ease. The first-order-motion-model can do facial reenactments in real-time, provided with only a single image of your desired avatar. This came not a moment too soon, as Human communication was forced to move online due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Can this be an opportunity to fulfill the long promised cybernetic utopia, where we could shed our physical shells and become however we wish to be? And how does this pertain to issues of privacy, identity and trust? I will review the contemporary technologies and show how I use them in my artistic and activist practices. This is a hands-on participatory tutorial, where you will create deep-fake videos using your own materials, and play with various options of becoming an online avatar. No prior knowledge needed. Maximum of participants: 20 Duration: 2,5 hours.

  • Sylvaine Chassay For more than 25 years, I have been working at the crossroads of contextual and participatory art, inspired by new medias. Multiform, my work takes the shape of installations, in-situ and in-socius interventions, as well as performative actions. Our human condition and its evolution are the central point of my preoccupation. I observe, scrutinize and question our lifestyle, our contradictions, and our collective and individual values, including myself in this process as much as my contemporaries. The resulting artworks emerge as proposals for participation. artetsite.org/sylvaine-chassay/2017/4/20/prsentation
  • Omer Cheema, Micro Stark Solutions Information Technology & Services