SENTIENCE - 2021
The latest project I have worked on is the Sentience: Art and Performance Technology project which was showcased at QUT Kelvin Grove. The project involved creating a performance-based work on the concept of 'sentience' under the lens of Animality, Matters Mattering, Politics of Sentience and Machinic Sense and Sensibility. I was part of the Politics of Sentience group with two other members.
Politics of Sentience - Abstract
Politics of Sentience explores themes of weaponised surveillance and the degradation of trust between images and audiences through falsified realities. Concerns of a post-truth world continue to grow alongside the increasing polarisation and volatility between political groups. The work presents a speculative future into which identity is completely obliterated as the physical and digital self-converge, combining live performance with video art and computer-generated technologies.
Final work
The final performance for Politics of Sentience was presented part of a group showing at QUT Kelvin Grove. The work opened with live interactive performance using a planted actor which was 'kidnapped'. Once the actor was removed from the crowd, the video artwork was triggered to play. This video involved motion capture animation and deepfake footage of the planted actor. Due to the nature of the performance having viewer interaction, the complete experience cannot be translated to video. Below is a portion of the video which was played during the performance.
Due to the nature of deepfakes using one's identity on a falsified video, there is a possibility the content can be seen as real and tarnish the actor's reputation. The content of these deepfakes involve drug use, fetish content, extreme political and religious views as well as conspiracy theories. Therefore, we are unable to publish this portion of our work, and instead provide screenshots below of each shot. Shot 6 and 7 are omitted due to the actor's wishes.
My Role
Within the Politics of Sentience group, there were no delegated roles as we were only a group of three members. This allowed for equal opportunity for creative input on the concept and to develop the work in a fair collaborative environment. Each of us partook in conceptualising, managing and creating the work. I specifically worked on creating the prosthetic skin masks to wear during the live performance, as well as rendering majority of the deepfake footage and editing the final deepfake section of the video together. I was also a performer during the live performance section.
For the overall Sentience project, there were general team roles established, of which I was part of the curatorial team. This involved establishing the order of performances while also writing abstracts for each of the works to be published in advertising the event.
