For the past few months, we’ve been deep-diving into digital heritage collections, remixing images to change how we see AI and how AI can be seen. All while rethinking those techy / sci-fi stereotypes with visuals that are as diverse as we are.

Why should you care? 👀 For so many of us, the visuals we see shape what we think AI actually is, and images are, in fact, the first language we speak with tech. A lot of what’s out there is either techie-utopian or dystopian gloom. But we need images that reflect the reality and the possibilities of AI in ways that speak to everyone.

"Thinking carefully about overlay and overlap, the process of collage becomes a way of embracing the fragmented realities of developing AI under extractive conditions. The practice of remixing imperial archives is a form of visual resistance and refusal– embrace the unrecoverable past in the histories of colonized peoples, honoring the fragments inflicted by colonial violence rather than trying to fill them in. Collage becomes a way of moving against the archival grain. By combining mixed media layers, the process weaves together historical violence, present realities, and alternative futures, thus, becoming a refusal of colonial temporalities and imperial visualities." - excerpt from Hanna's artist log

"More and more parents, including celebrities, are blurring or covering their kids’ faces with emojis in pictures before posting them on social media - they want their children to make their own choices. Children's rights advocates have been urging parents to think twice before sharing information about their kids, including their pictures because there is a conflict between the kids’ right to privacy and their parents’ right to post. In real life, we intuitively hide our faces by putting our hands in front of them, in the digital world, emojis serve as our hands, but they possess also a different quality. Obscuring a face in an image can limit the information people can glean from that image. However, it's still unclear how much it protects against institutions, such as social media companies and third parties that receive data from those social media companies, getting info from the image. What are we actually protecting the children from?" - Dominika on Now You See Me, Now You Don't image