Zizi & Me - Anything you can do (I Can Do Better)

For the New Now section of the fair, Zizi & Me by Jake Elwes uses cabaret and musical theatre to challenge narratives surrounding AI and society. As part of The Zizi Project (2019 - ongoing), Zizi & Me explores the intersections of drag performance and AI using neural networks and deep-fake technology. A double act
between drag queen Me the Drag Queen and a deepfake (AI) clone of Me the Drag Queen. Elwes trained a neural network on filmed footage. This network learnt to construct a virtual body that can be controlled by feeding it new reference movements.

Watch full version here.

About The Artist

Jake Elwes is a media artist whose explorations into machine learning and artificial intelligence expose their anthropomorphic partialities and spontaneities. The artist finds poetry and narrative in these systems' success and failures, their sophistication, and limitations, while investigating their code and ethics. In notable work, the Zizi Project, Elwes exposes AI bias by queering datasets with drag performers, simultaneously demystifying and subverting AI systems.

Elwes lives and works in London, having studied at The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (2013-17). The artist's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including the ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; TANK, Shanghai, China; Today Art Museum, Beijing, China; CyFest, Venice, Italy; Edinburgh Futures Institute, UK; Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany; New Contemporaries 2017, London, UK; Ars Electronica 2017, Linz, Austria; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación, Gijón, Spain; Nature Morte, Delhi, India; RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Australia; Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Cambridge, UK. They have been featured on ZDF aspekte (Germany) and the BBC Arts (UK).