Avital Meshi

Bio:

• SIGGRAPH Asia 2020

  What is the relationship between our physical body and our digital one? What kind of new social interactions can be explored while using digital platforms? My practice focuses on new media such as video games, virtual worlds and artificial intelligence and their impact on our social environment and our culture. In my work I invite viewers to explore aspects of their own identity as it is seen through the lens of new technologies. I create large scale, immersive installations and performances where I utilize elements of new media. Viewers acquaint themselves with these technologies and examine new information which is revealed through the interaction. Inspired by ideas of relational and new aesthetics, it is my goal to create spaces where we can intermingle with the machine and better understand the reciprocal agency of both humans and machines to act. In my latest performance Deconstructing Whiteness as well as in my previous AI related artwork, I examine our own ability to modify the results of the AI analysis by utilizing a performative behavior. The use of our external appearance as input in order to detect attributes of our identity uncovers structural thinking which has the potential to harm people’s lives. Therefore it becomes crucial that we familiarize ourselves with these systems and better understand how we are seen through them. Moreover, we must reveal our own agency to act upon them and make them see us as we wish to be seen. In my practice, performative behavior is offered as a tool to express our own agency, to resist the machinic vision and even to transform our identity in a radical way.

  SIGGRAPH 2018

  Avital Meshi is a California based artist. She was born and raised in Israel. Currently she is an MFA candidate from The Digital Art and New Media program at UC Santa Cruz. She holds a BFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and a BSc and an MSc in biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

  Meshi’s practice is inspired by her adventures in Virtual-reality and the way they intertwine with her real-life experiences. Her work involves a variety of mediums and techniques including photography, video, performance art, digital light projections, paper and book making, painting and drawing.

Writings and Presentations:

• Title: Stepping Inside the Classification Cube: An Intimate Interaction With an AI System
  Writing Type: Paper
  Author(s):
  • Avital Meshi
  • Angus Graeme Forbes
  
  Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2020: Think Beyond
  Abstract Summary:

  The “Classification Cube” art installation invites participants to become familiar with a machine learning classification system which estimates their age, gender, emotion, and actions. Rapidly changing results encourage participants to actively perform their behavior to the system and alter the way it “sees” them.

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  Role(s):

  
  
  • Artist
  • Author