Jean Dubois | Chantier IA

4-week individual residency for Jean Dubois

Ces visages qui n’appartiennent à personne (These Faces That Belong to No One) is a project that aims to explore creative avenues at the intersection of human intersubjectivity, virtual identities, and generative artificial intelligence. While Jean Dubois has often focused on unusual interactions between viewers and interactive characters, this time he seeks to envision how a collective identity might be orchestrated—an ensemble of characters able to interact in unison, as if all were driven by a single voice. But is there anything Humanity could say with one voice? Certainly not, for nothing can faithfully represent the plurality of all interest groups and individual intentions.

That said, can we still attempt to imagine it—especially now that some AI systems can assimilate virtually all of human knowledge to generate credible conversations, produce photorealistic portraits of people who don’t exist, transpose one person’s speech into another’s mouth, or build fabricated communities to sway public opinion?

In the realm of digital networks, what Dubois calls a “non-living Humanity” is beginning to emerge. Its members can be generated in large numbers and automatically synchronized to follow a purpose that may remain unfathomable, as their operations are often beyond human comprehension. Because it escapes our emotional awareness, this non-living Humanity must be brought to light. What path might it take outside our aspirations? How might it alter the way we see ourselves? How will it exploit our hormonal flows, cognitive biases, or irrational beliefs?

The emergence of this non-living Humanity raises numerous issues: the distortion of authentic identity, impacts on privacy and ownership of personal data, the evolution of norms and social interactions, the simulation of democracy, and political security.