A######### I########### | DAYNA MCLEOD

limited seating

presented as part of the exhibition A######### I###########

DaynAI

2022
Video, 51 sec

DaynAI: This is not Dayna McLeod’s gibber

2023
Video, 1 min 16 s

For the past year, Dayna McLeod has been working with artificial intelligence tools to explore human to non-human collaboration, embodiment, and performativity. In September 2022, the artist hired a company to make her into an AI actor she named “DaynAI.” Upon receiving the prototype in December 2022, she noted that her physical representation was evident, but not her voice. Disappointed, she later made two one-minute prototype videos that detail and describe some of these hurdles: DaynAI (2022) and DaynAI: This is not Dayna McLeod’s gibber (2023). She also observed that her AI “self” had a difficult temperament – she was outright mean.

In producing herself as an AI actor, using arts-based research-creation methods, the artist questions her ethical responsibilities to human actors used to produce this technology. This has led her to examine the affective uncanniness of AI actors in the ongoing DaynAI project that, as a whole, engage with facets such as queer AI, aging AI, and AI labour practices.

Photo credit: courtesy of the artist