Being You is an immersive video installation that uses AI to question how identity, value, and desire are generated in our image-saturated culture.

Here we have the “ideal” image of two women whose identity and value were constructed by the media technologies in which they proliferated, 1950s classic Hollywood cinema on the one hand and 2000s reality-TV/tabloid-press on the other. Both of these images made a claim on authenticity, whether we believed in the incandescent glamour of the Hollywood starlet or the garish behavior of the 2000s reality star. What is obvious today is that both these images are artificial: complete fabrications constructed by the Hollywood studio system or reality television producers. However, our continual consumption of these artificial images makes a very real impact on our own identities and self worth in relation to femininity, value, class, and beauty.

While the distance between these two archetypes seems vast, the installation suggests that there is an intimate connection between the two. At times mirroring each other, and other times simply admiring the other, it becomes unclear who is the original and who is the copy. The glances between the women are ambiguous: is it one of awe, desire, apprehension or are they simply reveling in the power of their own image?

By constructing, destabilizing and reassembling these women through AI video technologies, we highlight the way these women have always been artificially generated. Furthermore, we expose the way these (biased) archetypes are embedded in these networks the same way they are embedded in our collective unconscious. Weaved into the very fabric of generative technology, these myths are destined to be further perpetuated into the future with greater intensity and speed. Standing in front of their gaze, we recognize our reflections will always be bound to them.