# 07 Are You There AI God? It's Me, (Insert Name)

**DESCRIPTION:** Make a piece based on your identity, *your*self using some form of AI, for example a self portrait or a selfie or some other form that encapsulates an aspect of your identity.

**BE PREPARED** to discuss this creation in class or on discord next week.&#x20;

***COURSE NAMING CONVENTIONS FOR DIGITAL FILES:***\
**YearSemester\_CourseTitle\_NameOfActivity\_FirstLastName.fileformat**\
\&#xNAN;*Ex: 24FA\_AI\_Identity\_JorgeMendoza.doc*&#x20;

**INSPIRATION:** [NarGIFsus](https://vimeo.com/159504170): This is an exhibition co-curated by Carla in 2016, pre-dating much use of AI in image production. Still there are some hilarious digital takes (check out the fan as selfie) in this collection of work.

{% embed url="<https://vimeo.com/159504170>" %}

Some articles that may be helpful in your thinking about yourself

1. *THE SCIENCE OF SELF:* "What Is a 'Self'? Here Are All the Possibilities" by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, 2016, *Live Science* <https://www.livescience.com/57126-what-is-a-self-all-possibilities.html>
2. *AI AVATAR SELFIES:* “How Is Everyone Making Those A.I. Selfies?" by By Madison Malone Kircher and Callie Holtermann, 2022, *NY Times* <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/style/lensa-ai-selfies.html>
3. *FACIAL EXPRESSIONS IN SELFIES:* "AI and the American Smile How AI misrepresents culture through a facial expression." by Jenka, 2023, *Medium* <https://medium.com/@socialcreature/ai-and-the-american-smile-76d23a0fbfaf>
4. *SELF IDENTITY, SELFIE HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY:* "THE 'Selfie' Phenomenon as a Basis for Self-Identity Search. Preamble to a Philosophy of the Selfie Photography" by Sylvia Borissova and Liliana Yakovleva, 2020, *Philosophy*
5. *OBJECT ORIENTED PHILSOPHY & NARCISSISM:* "The I in Object: Selfie Culture and Object-Oriented Philosophy"
6. *ANTHROPOLOGICAL:* "The Origins of Self An Anthropological Perspective" by Martin P.J. Edwardes , *UCL Digital Press* <https://ucldigitalpress.co.uk/Book/Article/91/115/6744/>
7. *FACE TRACKING:* "Working with Faces: A journey into the art of face analysis and classification. by Kyle McDonald, *Medium* <https://kcimc.medium.com/working-with-faces-e63a86391a93>

**EXAMPLES:**\
**Carla Gannis:** "self portraits as a wwwunderkammer" 2022&#x20;

Description: "So I've been thinking about 'mixed media art,' about 7,810,000 Google results and the possibilities of "mixed algorithm art" 1 Google result. Over the past two days, I trained midjourney AI on 'wwwunderkammer, wunderkammer, cabinet of curiosity, cabinets of curiosity, feminism, decolonization, futuristic, hyperreal'. I trained Lensa AI on photos of me ranging from 6 years old until now. I then used the images generated from both of these platforms in playform AI (a platform I have been using since the early days of 2019. I love the abstractions an artist can achieve with playform) to generate a new set of images. So a few results (with some further tweaks by me in Photoshop) and a few of the generated images from midjourney and lensa that went into the soup."

<div><figure><img src="https://788392032-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FhnvzhCBSwXds8sM4smRK%2Fuploads%2Fst45RjrYyNuVlkX2ctdx%2F319813954_623698359530048_4372990550261268712_n.jpg?alt=media&#x26;token=262c55dc-e65f-4676-a0f0-e5a6660b7ec2" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure> <figure><img src="https://788392032-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FhnvzhCBSwXds8sM4smRK%2Fuploads%2Fx0Y4JxQso8Ocn029EyKO%2F320165776_692852182247100_256520371895963739_n.jpg?alt=media&#x26;token=dc551a94-a367-4431-b6f5-8c413127514c" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure> <figure><img src="https://788392032-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FhnvzhCBSwXds8sM4smRK%2Fuploads%2FcJeIm1XM10T7fjrB70TR%2F320034297_526032342879557_3700595975726971566_n.jpg?alt=media&#x26;token=98fa11d2-f924-4206-b3bb-b72358c59ed3" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure> <figure><img src="https://788392032-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FhnvzhCBSwXds8sM4smRK%2Fuploads%2FcoAP1XYhl5QzA1pcpnJd%2F319835052_1578662719271772_5800020701228824864_n.jpg?alt=media&#x26;token=f29c3ef7-a1f5-47b6-ac1f-c543ef2a537a" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure></div>

**Student Seun Elemo:** An AI generated image of a "Black man," a statement on how Seun's unique self is seen as a "flat" generic identity by others

<figure><img src="https://788392032-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FhnvzhCBSwXds8sM4smRK%2Fuploads%2FJIvZlsI426LMvgymDXeL%2FScreenshot%202024-02-06%20at%203.27.09%E2%80%AFAM.png?alt=media&#x26;token=bdf20a19-85b3-469c-95c1-126d55fe1c7e" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

**Student Benjamin Liang:** He passed this poem that he wrote to GPT and asked it to render an image of how I felt in the moment he was writing it (i.e. a snapshot of him “self”).

<div><figure><img src="https://788392032-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FhnvzhCBSwXds8sM4smRK%2Fuploads%2F1TmQ4TaBlfqqOHf1X2x7%2F24SP_Subverting_selfie-is-a-selfie-is-a-selfie-is-a-selfie_BenjaminLiang-1.jpg?alt=media&#x26;token=51445d8b-4df2-4052-a577-386560d26d1d" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure> <figure><img src="https://788392032-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FhnvzhCBSwXds8sM4smRK%2Fuploads%2FxxUcSNgKtN2Lgp31WLxG%2F24SP_Subverting_selfie-is-a-selfie-is-a-selfie-is-a-selfie_BenjaminLiang-2.jpg?alt=media&#x26;token=8788d27d-f280-4df3-aee3-82ef7f3d95dd" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure> <figure><img src="https://788392032-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FhnvzhCBSwXds8sM4smRK%2Fuploads%2FPA7CCC9EdZahMtj31cEK%2F24SP_Subverting_selfie-is-a-selfie-is-a-selfie-is-a-selfie_BenjaminLiang-3.jpg?alt=media&#x26;token=7539a6fb-bbb6-4750-b0ec-001354b74cf5" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure> <figure><img src="https://788392032-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FhnvzhCBSwXds8sM4smRK%2Fuploads%2FqZTxUezhzq91y2BWHJYk%2F24SP_Subverting_selfie-is-a-selfie-is-a-selfie-is-a-selfie_BenjaminLiang-4.jpg?alt=media&#x26;token=5a878a79-a87d-4a97-8fed-3e362dba1068" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure></div>
