Jake Elwes

Working at the intersection of machine learning, aesthetics, and ethics, Jake Elwes views AI not as an autonomous system but as a technology shaped by human biases and desires. Through moving image, sound, and performance, the works explore how AI generates images, identities, and narratives—highlighting both its alluring qualities and structural limitations.

A central focus of Elwes' practice is a critical engagement with the datasets and frameworks underlying machine learning. By reconfiguring these inputs, their implicit normative assumptions are revealed, particularly the dominance of cisgender and heteronormative representations. The works destabilize these systems from within, introducing moments of ambiguity and excess that reveal AI as a site where cultural values are reproduced, but also contested. In works such as The Zizi Show (2020)—a deepfake drag cabaret—identities merge, gestures dissolve, and the technical scaffolding becomes visible. Another project, Terms & Conditions Opera (2024), feeds AI systems their own legal frameworks, transforming terms and conditions into an opera that shifts attention from the outcome to the structures that determine it. While Elwes' works often present AI as a collaborator, they refuse to ascribe agency to the machine, persistently focusing on the social, political, and economic conditions that shape technological production.