Lauren Huret
Face Swap (past)

In her works, Lauren Huret takes on such issues as the impact of artificial intelligence. On her Website she only shares a disclaimer with users, since – as she writes – she’s quite mistrustful of the WWW. Her short video loop Face Swap presents the young artist sitting at a desk in front of a computer. While her hands occasionally twitch purposelessly over the mouse and the keyboard, the head that faces the viewer gazes at a blank, black-screen background. The isolated face, captured in the computer monitor, looks back at us.

With this simple gesture based on analogue collage techniques, she renders visible a fundamental state of technological progress: the outsourcing of our cognitive abilities to machines. At the same time, she comments – given the helplessness of the inconsequential body shell – on the resulting concept of the body as a dissectible and optimized object. 

(Text: Bettina Back)