Residency of VOICES COLLECTIVE, presented by IMPAKT in partnership with European Media Art Festival, KONTEJNER & Privacytopia
@Pieter Kers | beeld.nu and Ars Electronica Festival 2023
Voice technologies (VT), such as biometric identification and emotion recognition, raise concerns about surveillance, profiling and tracking of individuals. Voice cloning poses inherent risks, including identity theft, impersonation, and the dissemination of misinformation.
VOICES explores the identification, control and personalisation of our voice and hearing within the highly curated digital public space. The interactive audiovisual installation invites reflection on the impact of centralised platforms’ access to vast amounts of voice data, their capacity to and practice of controlling online expression and how it can affect who says what to whom. Audience members are encouraged to use their voices to contribute to a black box mediator and record a secret. In return, they visually follow the processing, analysis, and cloning of their voice recordings by various VT algorithms and can experience a unique sound-art composition in which their own voice narrates the secrets of others and their secrets are read back to them by the voices of other visitors. Bystanders can observe the alterations by listening and watching, using speakers and a monitor.
The VOICES project first travelled to the Ars Electronica Festival 2023 as part of an exhibition that ran from 6 to 10 September. Two of the four members of the collective were present in Linz: Phivos-Angelos Kollias and Yu Zhang. The second exhibition of the project took place at the IMPAKT Festival 2023 in Utrecht from 1 to 4 November. The collective took part in the festival's professional programme, meeting and exchanging ideas with invited professionals from the IMPAKT network and EFFEA Residency partners, Alfred Rotert from the European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück, Germany), Tabea Wagner, Ferre Vander Elst and Thierry Vandenbussche from the CPDP and Privacy Salon (Brussels, Belgium) and Davorka Begovic from KONTEJNER and the Gibanja Festival (Zagreb, Croatia).
At the IMPAKT Festival, EFFEA Artist and scientist Ahnjili ZhuParris led a workshop titled DEEPFAKES: CREATION AND DETECTION by VOICES. Deepfakes merge reality and fiction in static or moving images that are so convincing that they can easily deceive the viewer. This digital phenomenon is a double-edged sword: while it is undeniably a marvel of technology, it raises major ethical dilemmas about misinformation and privacy rights in our interconnected world. Ahnjili ZhuParris invited participants to join an introduction to the world of deepfakes and their societal ripple effects, followed by a hands-on exploration of deepfake creation using tools like DeepFaceLab.
Ahnjili ZhuParris also took part in the panel discussion OUR FUTURE WITH AI with Hind Dekker-Abdulaziz, Vladan Joler, Sebastian Schmieg, and moderated by Aaron Mirck. It aimed to address the balance between the opportunities and risks inherent to current developments in the field of AI.