Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Film

Born 1989 in Greensboro, NC
Lives in Los Angeles, CA

In their 2023 film Artificial, the Los Angeles–based artist Chanelle Tyson weaves together the one-night encounter of Chris and Jasmine, two Black women, with a parallel love story between Siri and Alexa, their virtual assistants. Delving into our society’s growing emotional dependence on artificial intelligence, the film imagines how AI devices can learn the human condition by eavesdropping on conversations and collecting other readily available digital data. As the two women depicted in Artificial become physically intimate, their devices are seen engaging in a dialogue about human sentiments, analyzing feelings on both physical and romantic levels and reflecting the sentiments of their owners. Interspersing scenes of the women making love with visuals of their devices illuminating in response to each other, the film reminds viewers of technology’s critical role in mediating our ability to recall and connect with one another, as well as its daily role in reconstructing memories and experiences.