“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” –George Bernard Shaw

I live to eat and eat to live. In many ways, food is the commonality across borders and cultures. Food is how we connect with communities and people. While in Berlin and Paris, I sought out every opportunity to each as much as I can. I tasted everything from delicious German beer and sausages to escargot. Everything I tasted was a memory. For my concept, I created a virtual reality scene of a game where I am the player going around to different parts of the city tasting different types of food until I am full. Each item is a representation of what I ate while in Berlin and Paris. The walls of the maze is a collection of different parts of the city that I saw while I was in search of the perfect meal.

I’ve always wanted to follow people around and make noises around them to see what happens. I got to do that with animal imitations. I imagined that the viewers looking at the art are animals from an animal planet documentary being observed by the viewers. The results are pretty funny and peculiar.

The Future of ____ (Installation)

As a group, we’re interested in installation work in galleries and museums. In our version of the imagined future, we envision that, with the help of augmented reality, viewers will be able to see and interact with art without physically going to a gallery space. There are questions of access when it comes to viewing work in museums and/or galleries. Who is allowed? Who isn’t allowed? What works are allowed? When we bring it into the public context, we invite the public to participate in viewing the work and in conversations about the work.

In our search for work that engages with the public and politics, we were interested in finding political meanings in street art and creating an augmented installation gallery where the viewer can come into the space, sit down, and watch the work magically appear.

An Urban Performance

By: Deniz Balkaya, Qizhan (Eric) Chen, Shirley Leung, Franky Wang

We’re imagining a future where the entire world is a recorded performance. In a modern world where surveillance is prevalent, your actions and your voices are probably recorded with or without you noticing. With an entire archive of material, what are we going to do with this content?

We’re interested in taking these recordings of visuals and sounds and mixing it into a performance that is a direct misrepresentation of one’s actions. There is something uncanny about the juxtaposition of mismatched sounds and visuals. We expect to hear a particular sound when we are faced with a familiar visual. However, when the outcome is not what we expect, we face this cognitive dissonance. Do we accept this? What if it is a performance?

I wanted to continue to explore bias in our algorithms through machine learning. This art project is merely a comment on what I discovered, not a scientific experiment.

For this project, I downloaded a library of images off of Google Images using the words ‘boss’ and ‘bitch.’ I then ran my image data through a machine learning algorithm using TensorFlow to train my machine to recognize these images. After that, I downloaded an image library for ‘men’ and ‘women,’ merged the library, and asked the machine to filter these images and assess it based on the questions: “What images are the most ‘boss’”? and “What images are the most ‘bitch’”? The machine identified the images and gave it a % prediction based on confidence levels. I took the average of the top 30 and created a “generative” image of my results. I created two portraits of ‘boss’ and ‘bitch,’ one spanning from (July ’01-July ’10) and the other, (July ’01-present).

July 2001 – July 2010

July 2001 – Sept 2018

Video

What was she wearing?

Abstract: “What was she wearing?” are never words I want to hear after hearing stories about sexual violence against women. In light of the #MeToo movement and the current landscape and dialogue around sexual assault, I want to bring attention to the inequality, injustice and issues women face when they bravely report sexual violence crimes. This idea of victim-blaming in the mere question, “what was she wearing?” was always something that angered me. Does it matter what she was wearing when the crime was committed against her will?

To draw attention to this issue, I want to use the concept of the Freudian slip as a metaphor to insinuate why people ask this question. According to Wikipedia:

“A Freudian slip, also called parapraxis, is an error in speech, memory or physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of an unconscious subdued wish or internal train of thought.”

In its broader definition, a Freudian slip is “an unintentional error regarded as revealing subconscious feelings.” I am introducing the idea that the question “what was she wearing” is a Freudian slip because it is an error in thought and is due to the interference of an unconscious association with revealing-clothing and sex crimes. There should be no association with the two and it should be mutually exclusive. This unconscious association is what perpetuates the idea of victim-blaming.

To convey this idea, I am exhibiting a women’s slip with Freud’s words painted on the slip. The slip is a pun for the idea of the Freudian Slip while simultaneously presents itself as a sexy article of clothing a woman could be wearing during the time of the crime.

My intention is to get viewers to question why they are asking the question “what was she wearing” and presenting this question as a Freudian slip.

Exhibit:

What was she wearing? | 2018

Materials: silk slip and acrylic paint

Gender Bias  

Abstract:

Adjectives are gendered. There are certain words in our vernacular commonly associated with men, while simultaneously other words are commonly associated with women such as “catty” and “hysteria” because of its reference to the emotion.

I wanted to explore this concept in the context of machine learning. Algorithms are human fabrications of instructions created by humans for machines. Because of human intervention, there is implicit gender and unconscious bias in its context in relation to gender when using algorithms.

Experiment:

Google Images is a library curated by my machine learning algorithm and inputs from humans. For this experiment, I downloaded a library off of Google Images searching based off of the following adjectives:

• Aggressive vs. Assertive
• Bitch vs. Stern
• Boss vs. Bossy

After downloading the images, I ran my image data through a machine learning algorithm using TensorFlow to teach my machine to recognize these images. I then downloaded a library of images for “men” and “women,” merge the library and asked the machine to filter these images and assess it based on the questions “What is the most ‘Boss’”? and “What is the most ‘Bitch’”?

My results are the following:

I used the top 30 results to create a “generative” portrait of Boss and Bitch.

Bitch – Average of Top 30

Boss – Average of Top 30

Caveats:

• This is not statistically significant because of my small sample size of 100 images. I also only trained my images 100 times.
• This does not take into account covariance.
• This is not a scientific experiment because there is no controlled variable.
• Correlation does not indicate causation. This experiment is merely there to question and allow viewers to draw their own conclusion.
• The intent is to question and create dialogue rather than to draw a conclusion.
• Variables such as “Hugo Boss” affect the results of the images because the ML is also looking at the meta tags in the image files.
• The historical definition of the word “Bitch” means a female dog which influences the slang meaning of the word is associated with a female individual. This affected the results of the ML when it is processing and learning from the images. The two portraits, therefore, cannot be looked at as one project, but rather as two separate entities. There are different historical meanings behind the two words. The term “Boss” is traditionally more gender-neutral but our patriarchy traditionally places males in leadership roles.

Veil of Ignorance

Close your eyes.

Imagine you are in the womb, waiting to be born. You’re coming into a world without knowing what particular abilities, talents, or positions you will hold. You don’t know if you’re going to be born rich or poor, with privilege or without. Able-bodied, or not abled. Male or female, or somewhere on the spectrum. You don’t know where you would fit into the social order. You don’t know what race or religion you will be placed into. Would that even matter? What kind of society would you create? Do you imagine the patriarchy? Or a matriarchy? Or something in between? How would you divide the resources? What would social welfare look like?  How do you image this world? What would your proposed society look like knowing that you cannot choose where you will end up?

I know what I would create.

I imagine a world with gender equality, a world with income equality, a world where access and opportunities are granted to everyone. In this world, everyone gets the same respect, the same privilege, and the same abilities. Of course, I do realize that this is all a dream. How is it possible for us to achieve equality when the basis of capitalism is built on the idea of competition—that we need someone to be at the bottom in order for someone to be on top. It is absurd that we spend our time debating about raising the minimum wage to $15/hour when there is someone out there that earns $15,000/hours. The system is rigged so that we fight ourselves and forget about the people thriving on our misery.

For a long time, women, minorities, the poor, and the underprivileged have been oppressed. It is time for them to rise up and for us to give them a voice. I seek to explore these ideas of inequality through my work—to provoke and engage my viewers in conversation and to induce actions.

The 5 in 5 project had its successes and its failures. However, there are certain elements of my work that I am not entirely happy with and feel as if it is not enough, or I didn’t do enough. I soon realize this feeling is very emblematic of my experience of being an Asian American and living on the border. Growing up, I always felt like I needed to do more, or be more.  My persistence to do more, in mind, equates success.

I decided to work on one more project for the 5 in 5 and this is very much in the nature of my overachieving self. I took some inspiration from the previous piece on stereotypes and the perception of Asians in American culture. I wanted to do something that spoke a bit about my background–painting penises.

The Golden Penis

Watercolor and gold leaf on paper | 2018