[ISEA2022] Paper: Marinos Koutsomichalis & Alexia Achilleos — Reinventing the Colonial Gaze Employing AI: a Case Study

Abstract

Short paper, theme: Educations and Societies: Digital preservation: resignifying memory and oblivion
Venue: CCCB, date: June 14

Keywords: Digital Colonialism, Decolonisation, GAN, Text to Image Synthesis, Text Synthesis

A case study of artistic research revolving around Cyprus’ colonial past. It pivots on an AI system trained on text from colonial handbooks of Cyprus so as to generate new colonial ‘gazes’ of Cyprus upon demand. Output text and imagery is used in a number of physical and digital artefacts.

This short paper accounts for a case study of artistic research revolving around Cyprus’ colonial past and inspired by present day decolonial affairs. The endeavour pivots on a hybrid AI system, trained on text from colonial handbooks of Cyprus (originally published when Cyprus was still part of the British Empire) and employing a custom image dataset meant to reflect this colonial view of the island. AI then generates new colonial ‘gazes’ of Cyprus upon demand. Output text and imagery is used in a number of physical and digital artefacts and events that are presented herein. https://marinoskoutsomichalis.com/projects/cyprus-as-ai-saw-it

  • Marinos Koutsomichalis (GR/CY) is an artist, scholar, and creative technologist. He is broadly interested in the materiality of self-generative systems, (post-)digital objecthood, sound, image, data, electronic circuitry, perception, selfhood, landscapes/environments, and the media/ technologies we rely upon to mediate, probe, interact, or otherwise engage with the former. He has exhibited or performed his work extensively and internationally and has held research or teaching positions in Greece, Italy, Norway, and the U.K. He is a Lecturer in Creative Multimedia at the Cyprus University of Technology (Limassol, CY) where he co-directs the Media Arts and Design Research Lab.
  • Alexia Achilleos is a Finnish-Cypriot artist and researcher, with a background in fine art, archaeology and cultural studies. She investigates data and utilises machine learning processes, to re-examine topics that impact narrative, biases found within history and society, but also within technology itself. [Source: https://alexiaachilleos.com]