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Jake Elwes
Jake Elwes speaking at Gazelli Art House 2021, photo by Gretchen Andrew
BornJuly 1993 (1993-07) (age 31)
London, United Kingdom
EducationSlade School of Fine Art
Central Saint Martins
Known forDigital art, Conceptual art, Queer art, Artificial intelligence art, New media art
Parent(s)Anneke and Luke Elwes
Websitejakeelwes.com

Jake Elwes (/ˈɛl.wɪs/) is a British media artist, hacker and researcher. Their practice is the exploration of artificial intelligence (AI), queer theory and technical biases.[1] They are known for using AI to create art in mediums such as video, performance and installation.[2] Elwes considers themselves to be neuroqueer,[3] and their work on queering technology addresses issues caused by the normative biases of artificial intelligence.[4][1]

Education and early life

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Elwes was born in London to British contemporary artist and painter Luke Elwes and Anneke, daughter of Hans Dumoulin. Elwes is the great grandchild of Army officer James Hennessy and portrait painter Simon Elwes RA, son of Victorian opera singer Gervase Elwes.[5][6]

Elwes studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 2013 to 2017, where they began using computer code as a medium.[2] In 2016 they attended the School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe in Berlin with artist and educator Gene Kogan.[2] Elwes was introduced to drag performance by their collaborator Dr Joe Parslow[7] who holds a PhD in drag performance. Drag performance has since become instrumental to Elwes' work.[1]

Career

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Zizi - Queering the Dataset, 2019 - film stills

Elwes' work with artificial intelligence is cited as a hopeful strategy to make AI more playful and diverse.[8]

They have exhibited in museums and galleries across Europe and Asia including Pinakothek der Moderne,[9] Gazelli Art House,[10] Arebyte gallery,[1][11] ZKM,[12] Science Gallery,[13] Fotomuseum Winterthur,[14] The Onassis Foundation,[15] Today Art Museum,[16] and they are featured in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection as the first digital commission in their photography center.[17]

Elwes has been featured in a BBC documentary on the history of video art [18], they were a 2021 finalist for the Lumen Prize,[19] and received the Honorary Mention of the 2022 Prix Ars Electronica in the Interactive Art + category.[20] They also curated and presented the opening provocation "The New Real - Artistic and Queer Visions of AI Futures" to the UK government with two drag artists at the AI UK conference 2024.[21]

Elwes is part of the Radical Faeries countercultural movement.[22]

Art in the Cage of Digital Reproduction

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In an act of protest on 26th November 2024, Elwes facilitated indirect access to an early access token for OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video model through a Hugging Face frontend under the account "PR Puppets"[23]. The accompanying statement called to 'denormalize the exploitation of artists by major AI companies for training data, R&D, and publicity'. The incident attracted international press coverage calling into question the role of artists in shaping the future of generative AI versus merely serving as data and credibility providers for tech giants.[24][25][26]

Elwes also coordinated a collection of mini essays with responses and reflections from the signees and guest writers titled "Art in the Cage of Digital Reproduction".[27]

The Zizi Project - a deepfake drag cabaret

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The Zizi Show 2020, montage of deepfake drag artists

The Zizi Project is a series of works that explore the interaction of drag and A.I. Currently, Zizi is made up of three projects.

Zizi - Queering the Dataset (2019)

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Knowing that facial recognition technology statically struggle to recognize black women or transgender people, Elwes set out to "Queer the Dataset" through an open-sourced generative adversarial network (GAN). Elwes added a dataset of 1,000 photos of drag kings and queens into the GAN's 70,000 faces collected in a standardised facial recognition dataset called Flickr-Faces-HQ Dataset (FFHQ). They then created new simulacra faces, known as deep fakes.[1] “We queer that data so it shifts all of the weights in this neural network from a space of normativity into a space of queerness and otherness. Suddenly all of the faces start to break down and you see mascara dissolve into lipstick and blue eye shadow turn into a pink wig” said Elwes in a 2023 interview for Artnet.[28]

Zizi & Me (2020)

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Zizi & Me is a performance and video installation that shows a joint performance between drag queen 'Me The Drag Queen' and her deepfake A.I. clone.[29]

The Zizi Show - A Deepfake Drag Cabaret (2020)

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The Zizi Show is a deep fake drag act based on artificial intelligence (AI). It has been presented live and as interactive online artwork. It is an exploration of queer culture and the algorithms philosophy and ethics of AI.[30] The Zizi Show was exhibited as the inaugural exhibition in the digital gallery at the V&A’s Photography Center from 2023 to 2024.[28]

Installations exploring interpretation and feedback loops between neural networks

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Elwes has created works based on the interpretations and misinterpretations between different neural networks and training datasets including: A.I. Interprets A.I. Interpreting ‘Against Interpretation’ (Sontag 1966) from 2023, Closed Loop from 2017, and Auto-Encoded Buddha from 2016. In Auto-Encoded Buddha, an early generative neural network struggles with depicting a representation of Buddha in tribute to Nam June Paik's TV Buddha (1974).[2][31]

CUSP

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CUSP 2019 - film still
CUSP 2019 - montage of machine learning generated birds

In their video work CUSP (2019) Elwes places marsh birds generated using artificial intelligence into a tidal landscape. These digitally generated and constantly shifting birds are recorded in dialogue with native birds. The video work is also accompanied by a soundscape of artificially generated bird song.[32]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "Meet the artist queering AI technology". The Independent. 30 July 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d "Episode I. Artificial Intelligence and Drag Performance: Jake Elwes's "The Zizi Project" |". Flash Art. 23 October 2020. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  3. ^ "Both Sides Needed Film screenings - Jake Elwes bio".
  4. ^ Condliffe, Jamie (15 November 2019). "The Week in Tech: Algorithmic Bias Is Bad. Uncovering It Is Good". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
  5. ^ Townend, Peter (1965). Burke's Landed Gentry, 18th edition, vol. 1. London: Burke's Peerage Ltd. p. 236.
  6. ^ Morris, Susan (2019). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage. London: Burke's Peerage Ltd. p. 4811.
  7. ^ "CSSD Staff Profiles -Dr Joe Parslow". www.cssd.ac.uk. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  8. ^ Gleadell, Colin (19 February 2019). "Can AI be a big hitter in the art world? Sotheby's first AI work at auction could sell for £40,000". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  9. ^ "Glitch, Pinakothek der Moderne". www.pinakothek.de. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  10. ^ "Zizi - Queering the Dataset | Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  11. ^ "Cede Control of Your Web Browser to This High Tech Exhibition". ocula.com. 27 September 2021. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  12. ^ "Jake Elwes | ZKM". zkm.de. 18 May 2019. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
  13. ^ "BIAS, Science Gallery Dublin". sciencegallery.com. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  14. ^ "Photoforum Pasquart". www.fotomuseum.ch. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  15. ^ "Jake Elwes". www.onassis.org. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
  16. ^ "TODAY ART MUSEUM | Future of Today·DE JA VU". www.todayartmuseum.com. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
  17. ^ "The Art of Photography". The Open Art Fair. 16 September 2021. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
  18. ^ "Kill Your TV: Jim Moir's Weird World of Video Art". IMDb. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  19. ^ "Inside A.I. Art". The Lumen Prize. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
  20. ^ "Prix Ars Electronica 2022". calls.ars.electronica.art. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  21. ^ "AI UK 2024 Program". ai-uk.turing.ac.uk. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  22. ^ "Jake Elwes - About". www.jakeelwes.com. Retrieved 26 November 2024.
  23. ^ "HugginFace PR Puppets". huggingface.co. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  24. ^ Spangler, Todd (27 November 2024). "OpenAI Shuts Down Sora Access After Artists Released Video-Generation Tool in Protest: 'We Are Not Your PR Puppets'". variety. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  25. ^ "OpenAI's text-to-video AI tool Sora leaked in protest by artists". Financial Times. 26 November 2024. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  26. ^ "OpenAI hits pause on video model Sora after artists leak access in protest". Washington Post. 26 November 2024. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  27. ^ "Art in the Cage of Digital Reproduction". artinthecageofdigitalreproduction.org. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  28. ^ a b Lawson-Tancred, Jo. "Is A.I. Coming for the Drag Queens Next? A Deep Fake Cabaret at the V&A Exposes the Tech's Limitations". Artnet.
  29. ^ "The New Real, Edinburgh Futures Institute - The Zizi Project". www.newreal.cc. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
  30. ^ Wade, Mike. "'Deep fake' drag act is the new reality". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
  31. ^ "Neural, A.I. Interprets A.I. Interpreting "Against Interpretation" (Sontag 1966), machine logic understanding". neural.it. 2 May 2024.
  32. ^ "AIArtists.org - Our Featured Artists". aiartists.org. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
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