#SOPHYGRAY – A Feminist Audio Bot

EMAP resident artist Nadja Verena Marcin presents #SOPHYGRAY, an interactive installation and performance accompanied by an app launch on the Google Play app store and iOS app store. As a critical reflection on the use of chatbots such as Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana or Apple’s Siri, the artist addresses the possibilities and limitations of AI in the fields of language and emotion.

Sophy, an audio bot, has been trained by the artist and its developers to have conversations about identity, art, and feminism. Text excerpts from important feminist theorists form the basis of the bot’s knowledge. It aims to draw attention to the gender biases embedded in today’s technologies, exposing and overturning the stereotypes associated with common language use and habitus. The impact of personal intelligent assistants in everyday life, the representation of women in the media, and the objectification that the use of these gendered technologies often entails are the focus of Marcin’s project.

Within the spatial installation, the artist along with two dancers will embody the audio bot, as well as female figures and gynoids inspired by Fritz Lang’s classic film “Metropolis” (1927), Ava from the film “Ex Machina” (2014), and Dolores from the series “Westworld” (2016).

The dialogues will be based on the chats and interactions with which the bot has been trained so far in different cities such as Berlin and New York, and most recently in Athens.

As part of the event, visitors will receive the scan code and try “Sophy” on their devices at home.

This project was developed by Nadja Verena Marcin with a team of developers from NOVATEC and a growing list of creative writers and theorists mentioned in the database. As part of the EMAP residency, the app is the result of a collaboration with Alex Stachowiak.

#SOPHYGRAY is made possible by the EMAP residency program, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Ministry of Culture North Rhine-Westphalia, NEUSTART KULTUR by the German Federal Culture Commissioner, Stiftung Kunstfonds in Bonn, as well as sponsored by IT company Novatec. The artwork is fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts.