How does AI technology shape our identity, social dynamics, and culture?
Drawing on years of research in New Media and Performance, Avital Meshi invites participants to explore, play, and engage with AI systems that serve as platforms for identity transformation. The workshop features interactive demonstrations of the GPT-ME system, an AI wearable that injects ideas directly into the mind, and the MOVE-ME system, which observes the environment and guides the wearer on how to move within it. Participants are encouraged to examine the boundaries between human creativity and AI's influence, challenging concepts of independent thinking, self-perception, improvisation, and embodiment in a hybrid AI-human world. The core idea we will explore is not just how we use AI technology but how we become entangled with it - integrating it into our sense of self, allowing it to augment our intelligence, influence our bodies, and open our minds to new ideas. What kind of humans will we become as we undergo this transformation?
Avital Meshi is a New Media Artist. She is a Ph.D. student in the Performance Studies Program at UC Davis, and she holds an MFA from The Digital Arts and New Media program at UC Santa Cruz and a BFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She also holds a BSc and an MSc in Behavioral Biology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Meshi's practice focuses on performance and artificial intelligence. In her research, she examines the impact of AI algorithms on our behavior and society. Inspired by ideas of Relational-Aesthetics and New-Aesthetics, her goal is to allow viewers to reveal their own power to act upon the technology and to collaborate with it. Meshi's artworks have been exhibited at The Great Hall Exhibitions of NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, Currents New Media Arts Festival, Root Division Gallery in San Francisco, Sesnon Gallery in Santa Cruz, ACM SIGGRAPH, NeurIPS, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, and more.
