Alison Nguyen is Art in America 2025 "New Talent" Artist to Watch!
In 2019, with her collaborator Achim Koh, she created a machine learning program called Andra8, which Nguyen visualized as a humanoid woman in the video installation piece My Favorite Software Is Being Here (2021). Andra8, an AI assistant, content creator, and data aggregator rolled up in one simulated being, epitomizes exploited labor. Yet Nguyen, against expectations, urges us to embrace Andra8’s state of alterity. “AI isn’t the enemy,” she said. “It’s the curators and artists who are already acting like AI and using these technologies in deadened ways.” At the end of the film, Andra8 throws a milkshake out of the window and develops her own subjectivity—it’s a call for us to do the same.
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With Video and AI, Alison Nguyen Channels History's Strange Side | Art in America
