Institute History
Description
In this innovative participatory experience, Being, an artificial intelligence digital griot, asks the audience to engage in unifying and challenging discussions. It features a soundscape and movement informed by a dataset from Black communities, theorists, poets, and activists, including bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Dazié Grego-Sykes, and Cornel West.
Being (the Digital Griot) is a machine learning model run by a counterhegemonic algorithm that multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome has been developing since 2019. Being (the Digital Griot) takes the humanoid form of a 30-foot tall, femme vogue Afro-futurist cyborg, who writes and reads poetry, and leads critical pedagogy workshops that teach people to decolonize their minds. Colonial values of extraction and exploitation live ubiquitously inside the hearts and minds of colonial subjects, and are the root of our unconscious compulsion to dehumanize and extract value from each other, and from our planet. Being offers generous ways of forging relationships — with others and with ourselves. Newsome reminds us that AI is powered by the richness of our collective human archive, and is a reflection of the values of the designer.—SF
Screenings include open captions.