Anna Nazo

featured by Haami Nyangibo

Anna Nazo is a pioneering figure at the intersection of art, technology, and science. With an innovative approach that seamlessly blends artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, and drone technology into her creative process, Nazo challenges traditional boundaries and invites us to reconsider the relationship between technology and humanity. Her work is characterised by a deep engagement with techno-spirituality, quantum realities, and the complexities of sympoiesis. It offers a fresh perspective on the potentials of AI and technology as mediums for artistic expression and exploration.

In this interview, Nazo delves into the intricacies of her practice, shedding light on her early adoption of AI as a creative partner and the evolution of her work with technology. She discusses the ethical considerations inherent in her work, particularly in relation to indigenous communities and non-Western epistemologies, and articulates a vision for a techno-spiritual future that blends ancient wisdom with modern innovation. Through her reflections on AI-generated poetry, the emotional resonance of algorithmic analysis, and the philosophical underpinnings of her approach, Anna Nazo invites us into her world.

Haami Nyangibo: A lot of artists are exploring AI with the prevalence of ChatGPT, OpenAI, all of these things. How exactly do you use AI in your work, and what does that look like for you?

Anna Nazo:Well, I started to work with AI actually a while ago when it was not a hot topic within the arts community. And I think it was back in maybe 2016. I just started to dig into it, and I still work with the same AI. It’s a very old type of AI. It’s like an algorithm that I have to run on my old laptop now, in terminal, and it’s very different to contemporary AIs that work with text. Now it’s all about this perfection, while actually the previous generations of AI, it allowed you to explore the space in between and something that is not perfect, something that is, in a sense, to me, much more humane and it gives a space for a kind of opening for me to come in as a full creator, because for me, it’s not just a tool.

It’s more about making with technology. I started to work with Deep Writing, and it was a process of exploration; what can we do and create together? How would it actually work? Because at the beginning, it was not particularly clear. It was very much intuitive on my side, to see how it can become part of my practice. I didn’t have a set goal or parameter, or I want to do that thing with AI or a particular thing. It was just what this technology does, how would I feel as well to bring in this new collaborator in my practice? How will this connection manifest itself within the artwork?

“Receiving a very basic analysis of my writings from AI was quite sensitive. I think I cried when I read the text for the first time.”

With that in mind, I just started to put together all my personal diary entries, personal writings, poetry that I had, back then it was quite a significant document already. Some of my PhD writing, more like philosophy and just literally feeding it into AI just to see what will come out. And I was quite emotionally touched when I got the text back. I wouldn’t say it would mean anything for somebody else, but within my personal context, which was quite sensitive, around my own search and understanding of myself, my identity, my gender identity, my migrant identity.

So receiving a very basic analysis of my writings from AI was quite sensitive. I think I cried when I read the text for the first time. Because how it works is very straightforward. It just analyzes which words you use more often in your speech and your writing. But because it’s your words and you use them in a particular way, they usually link to some personal traumas and experiences. And so for me, it was a very strong emotional experience to actually encounter it for the first time and then think about it and reflect on it.

Dawn. Performance for Civic Art Lab Closing the Loop + Inhabiting the Loop exhibition, hosted by GreenspaceNYC, Chinatown Soup Gallery, NY, USA. 10th October 2019, 0.45’. © Anna Nazo. [INTERACTIVE VIDEO, only computer browser]

Your work frequently explores the integration of AI, drones, and neurotechnology. Could you describe the process of blending these technologies in your practice?

I think that it took some time for me to understand which way it could become a part of my practice, as I started to work with neurotechnology. I worked mainly with somatic practices and looked at movements. I mean everything, very small movements that we do just when we’re talking and gestures. We always take it for granted how much brain activity it involves.

Then I started to look at the text that AI gave to me; experimenting how actually reading this text affects me emotionally and how it actually impacts my brain activity at that particular moment. I started to put together, using some of the parts of the text that came from AI and then adding something to it from my side, what felt right at that moment. This is almost like a conversation I call AI poetry, but it’s more my responses at the moment to AI analysis of my overall use of words and language.

I found that process quite interesting and beautiful because it’s like having a conversation through somebody else with your own self. It’s like folding; creating folds around your own identity. It’s like talking to your own self, maybe from the past, from the present moment. I did find a lot of beauty in this process for myself, which was also very personal.
Then it was interesting what kind of text or I call it poetry, but it’s not poetry in a traditional sense. Some of it was quite abstract and quite mechanical in some ways. Working that way helped me to understand beauty that is not straightforward, also the beauty of the meaning behind it. It’s like every word comes with a cloud of meanings as technologically as it can be. You immediately connect to all this cloud of words that stands behind this one single word on the page.

At first it was interesting that the AI mainly used nouns within analysis. So it was drier than we would normally use because we use a lot of adjectives, we add a lot of feelings to it. So at first I started adding adjectives, creating the visual painting around the words through other words and it was interesting to see how throughout years actually the patterns changed because I started to use more noun-based combinations, which for me felt even more intense when you see the meaning behind different things that AI could point me towards.

Flame is a live digital-analogue AV performance that includes spoken word poetry co-written with AI, drone performance and real time CGI generated from artist’s brainwave data (EEG).
The work reflects on the notion of home in an age of isolation, otherness and the sensuous of the digital realm.
Zoom @Flame

As an artist who engages with AI and other advanced technologies, how do you navigate the ethical implications, particularly regarding indigenous communities and non-Western epistemologies?

I think there is definitely a need for deeper exploration of algorithms that are being used within society. With many artists and activists, there is a concern around biases within the AI algorithms, especially around race, gender, class, and how it reflects back to us. As this information was coded; who are the people behind the code and what’s their understanding of society.

I think artists are doing some radical things, especially within the area of AI and looking at decolonising AI and bringing in different perspectives. I think for me it’s interesting to see how I can approach my own practice from that point of view as well, because as I said, I was always interested in non-Western epistemologies. I think they offer a radical perspective on existence and our relations.

So it’s interesting to see how within this practice, I can bring in those epistemologies and offer this alternative view of looking at the world and the universe around us. I think the main thing for me would be respect, I think, care, and unconditional love that’s offered by indigenous knowledge systems and having that kind of approach towards each other, towards the planet, towards the universe.

I also see you’re interested in techno-spirituality. How does this inform your practice?

Techno-spirituality for me is about blending ancient and modern practices together. For me, technology was always, as I said, a creative tool, but also a spiritual medium. I think it’s quite evident, especially in club cultures where you can see different kinds of people and technology; it’s all very entangled. Spaces where people and technology meet and create this new reality together.
For me, it’s also interesting to see how those spaces foster this fluidity, radical change, especially for those communities that are marginalised in some ways within the society.

How do scientific and philosophical concepts, particularly quantum reality and sympoetic complexities, shape your artistic practice?

I think it’s very interesting to look at quantum reality from a philosophical and scientific perspective and see how they mirror each other. As a scientist, you would say that there’s infinite possibilities within quantum mechanics and that hints at a lot of ancient wisdom as well. For me, it’s interesting to approach reality from that point of view and embracing this uncertainty, embracing interconnectedness, and looking at how it all comes together, how we all interact with each other within the universe and within the world. I think it’s interesting for me, also to look at the new materialism, influenced by queer theory and see how it informs my own practices, especially when I look at identity, existence, and how we can come together as different entities.

As I mentioned, my professional background, moving from a scientific background towards art, was a journey. So I did many things, including being trained in more traditional studio-based environments. Six years training in painting, drawing, sculpture, then moving towards something digital, then going to drama school and doing performance. Philosophy came through largely the understanding that at some point we all question who we are and largely how we understand ourselves being in the world. Where is our community, family and my fluid family, or chosen family. Those processes that were like personal inquiry into understanding of my own selves, my own self, or actually even selves because it’s not just one single thing that led me through different kind experiences. Where I’m right now at least of understanding of the world, very much aligned.

“I think humanity in general tries to simplify things, like within systems of governance because it’s easy to control something when you can put it in a box and label it. But actually life itself is ungovernable”

I already mentioned non-Western onto-epistemologies and knowledge systems, but in parallel with that, it seems that it’s kind of very much telling the same story but through different words. It could be looking at the notion of looking at the world through quantum processes, quantum mechanics, and as well as through sympoetics, understanding that none of us is just one singular individual but we are ourselves which is made by the complexity of the world. That’s quite an interesting process when you think about it because of how many actual human cells we have within ourselves, and how many of the cells are actually living. Living cells, living organisms.

If you just sit with it for a minute, you actually understand that you’re not alone, you’re many. You’re always many. All of us are many. It creates quite a fundamental shift in understanding being in the world, and relating to everything in the world because it first of all just starts with your own self, as a collage of selves. In that way, all those multiplicities, I think humanity in general tries to simplify things, like within systems of governance because it’s easy to control something when you can put it in a box and label it.

But actually life itself is ungovernable. It’s very complex, it’s messy, and understanding all this may be quite terrifying for some people sometimes but on the other hand embracing it is also very liberating. Accepting that multiplicity, complexity, plurality actually gives you a very different ground. A more fruitful and supportive ground, heart opening as well. I’m very much bringing in and stick to this term of complexities. Usually opposed to this very Western approach of something complex is not necessarily a good thing. I do see it as a rather good thing, and as a phenomenon. Perhaps we should stop simply trying to simplify things, and actually acknowledge the fullness of lived experience of all of us being this part of one big messy moving living creative. Like an ocean of chaotic matter.

It was a journey, it was lived experience and me taking this step by step forward, making mistakes understanding what works or doesn’t work. And of finding I guess your own space, kind of space or state of stillness which is not still which is actually in constant movement as well. Through this it altogether makes you think, and most importantly feel and understand everything around you in a very different, I would say radically different way, which, again results in the way you understand intelligence and consciousness and acknowledging those kind of attributes that are not just necessarily applicable to again humans or living organisms but literally to everything around us in the world.

Whenever alone in so many ways, even if you look at the understanding of being biologically one thing, all the processes that are happening, a constant interaction of wave fields, even when we speak the sound waves of my voice they enter you through your ears. It’s constant entanglement.