Latent visions

Performance Space
Visual Arts Facility
252 Russell Lane
La Jolla, CA 92093

November 18-22, 2024

Related works:
Deep Drew
The Imitation Game

Featuring two video installations created with generative artificial intelligence, Latent Visions was a solo exhibition held at the University of California - San Diego’s Performance Space from November 18-22, 2024.

During the summer and fall of 2023, screenwriters went on strike to protest, among other concerns, the use of generative AI in the commercial film and television industry. In September 2023, when Drew Barrymore announced her talk show would resume production during the ongoing strike, she was heavily criticized by Writers Guild of America members. In response, Barrymore posted an Instagram video “deeply” apologizing that was also widely derided on social media. Deep Drew uses deepfakes to offer a speculative and satirical continuation of this story. Surprisingly philosophical and vulnerable, this “deep” version of Drew confronts her own complicities and traumas while reflecting on the harms generative AI poses to writers, actors, and one’s own sense of self. 

Created using generative deep learning models and found footage, The Imitation Game is a short narrative film about what it means to be human in a world increasingly mediated by simulations and representations. After Bruce, a professor of popular films, has a terrible bicycle accident, Rachel, his ex-girlfriend and lone emergency contact, is summoned to the hospital. There, she learns that Bruce’s accident has resulted in a mysterious speech disorder: he can now only speak famous lines from movies. As Rachel, an AI researcher, begins spending more time with Bruce and their relationship turns romantic, she questions whether his core identity remains and whether they can avoid repeating mistakes from their past.

The film is named after Alan Turing’s proposed game, better known today as the Turing test, for determining whether machines can display human-like intelligence. Although widely criticized, the Turing test remains highly significant in the history and philosophy of artificial intelligence. While previous research questioned whether machines could think, Turing instead questioned whether machines could pass as human. This question, in turn, raises even more fundamental questions about humanity itself. If a machine can successfully simulate a human, to the point where human and machine outputs are indistinguishable, then what does it mean to be human?