Big Dada / Public Faces (2019)

‘Big Dada / Public Faces’ (2019)

Single channel video (loop)

Synthetic art

3min 04 sec

Ed. of 3, 1AP

(with Daniel Howe)

A visual narrative comprised of six “deep fake” new media works featuring AI-synthesised personas of Marcel Duchamp, Marina Abramović, Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian, Morgan Freeman and Donald Trump. ‘Big Dada’ was inserted into Instagram as a digital intervention in June 2019 and quickly went viral leading to global press coverage and unexpected – and contradictory – official responses from Facebook and Instagram concerning their policies regarding synthesised media on their platforms.

“The sophisticated manipulation of videos like these, which appear to show Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying something he did not, led to a European Union proposal to ban facial recognition use by government.”

– Reuters

Press coverage: New York Times / Washington Post / BBC / Guardian / NY Post / Independent / Spiegel / Le Monde / La Republica / CNN / CNBC / ABC News / USA Today / Standaard / MIT Review / Artnet / Vice / Dazed / BBC Radio 4 / BBC World Service / Channel 4 News / Folha De S.Paulo / Frieze / Creative Review / Good Trouble Magazine / France24