Nouf Aljowaysir

featured by Sophie Nowakowska

Nouf Aljowaysir is a Brooklyn-based creative technologist whose innovative work resides at the captivating crossroads of design, art, and computation. The artist embraces the transformative power of emerging technologies to reimagine our future. Through a unique blend of branded environments, digital products, and unconventional interfaces, she crafts experiences that challenge our perceptions and provoke thoughts about the world to come.

Her recent artistic ventures delve into Artificial Intelligence, creating generative designs and speculative futures that dazzle the senses and invite profound contemplation on the ethical frameworks underpinning these advanced technologies. Her work is a critical inquiry into the algorithms that shape our digital landscape, urging a reflective dialogue on their broader societal implications.

The artist showcased her work in esteemed US and European venues, including the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, SXSW, and Cannes XR Virtual. Her recognition includes the ThoughtWorks Arts Residency, which was awarded for her compelling exploration of how emerging technologies impact our world.

In this interview, she shares her insights on the dynamic interplay between human creativity and AI, highlighting artists’ crucial role in addressing the ethical challenges posed by technological progress. She discusses the impact of AI on identity, memory, and the deeply personal aspects of human experience, underscoring a commitment to fostering a more inclusive, ethically grounded technological future.

Sophie Nowakowska: In your experience, how has integrating emerging technologies influenced the traditional understanding of creativity, and what does this mean for the future of artistic authenticity?

Nouf Aljowaysir: I believe that adopting emerging technologies has broadened our creative horizons, introducing new mediums and forms of expression. Depending on the definition of technology, one might argue that artists have been experimenting with it since the early 1900s. Given its continued pervasive presence in our daily lives, it feels natural to incorporate it into the artistic process and reflect on our creativity in relation to constant technological influences.

I think artists and technology collaborations will increase in the future in ways that critique or perhaps intersect with it.

“My practice involves research and a process that studies missing ethical questions by evaluating AI and technology’s output from a non-western lens”

Reflecting on your diverse projects, how do you see your role as an artist in questioning and potentially reshaping the ethical boundaries of AI and technology, especially considering their rapidly expanding influence in our lives?

As an artist and someone who works in the tech industry itself, I’ve become deeply aware of the dichotomy between those two worlds. The leaders and engineers in tech are predominantly occupied with metrics of growth, profitability, and mass engagement. Their mindset is within a capitalist framework that leans heavily towards functionality and utility, leaving little space for ethical considerations about the impact of their creations on society.

I see my role as an artist as crucial in challenging this capitalist paradigm. My practice involves research and a process that studies missing ethical questions by evaluating AI and technology‘s output from a non-western lens. Coming from another country and seeing technology‘s impact on my identity and culture, my work highlights and addresses disparities, ensuring a broader and more inclusive understanding of AI’s global impact.

How do you envision the future interplay between human creativity and AI-driven processes in the arts?

AI is utterly dependent on human creativity to produce its results. It is a tool designed to feed off centuries of human knowledge and reduce it into smaller pieces that reshuffle together to generate an output. While the technology is impressive, human ingenuity and randomness of creativity are something AI cannot truly recreate but simply copy and mimic an attempt.

In a way we are always a source of inspiration for AI because it’s never generating something truly authentic and novel but a regurgitation of what it has seen and learned. I predict we might see a closer collaborative relationship between artists and AI technologies in their work. I started working with AI in 2019 when it hadn’t culturally exploded yet but was gaining popularity amongst researchers and only a few new media artists. Now, it feels like it has imploded. I see almost every new media artist incorporating AI in some form in their work, so I anticipate to see creativity adapt and change based on these explorations.

How do you perceive the role of AI in exploring and expressing cultural and personal identity? What are the potential benefits and pitfalls of using AI to navigate personal explorations?

We have been using AI technologies to explore our identities and deeply personal issues for many years. It started with asking Google or other search engines to help explore deeply intimate questions we might not otherwise reveal to others. Now, with the popularity of ChatGPT, direct one-on-one conversations with AI have become more common, with users continuing to seek a safe space and delve into personal issues. This phenomenon of conversing with AI is popular and will continue to increase, blurring the lines between robots and humans. However, it’s important to question and evaluate these AI search results and answers from an ethical standpoint.

The potential benefit is the ability to explore difficult questions privately, using technology that aggregates insights from similar queries posed by others. However, there are significant risks, including possibly receiving biased or entirely incorrect answers. In addition, one might feel isolated, overlooked or erased if the technology fails to represent or acknowledge your identity and perspective. For example, Google’s latest AI tool, Gemini, intentionally fails to answer questions such as “Where is Palestine?” and “What is Palestine”, an example where tech leaders intentionally erased a specific culture from being discussed.

Nouf Aljowaysir, Ana Min Wein (Where am I From)?, 2022, digital, moving image. (Teaser)
Cinematographer, Creative Consultant & Advisor: Sarra’a Alshehhi
Producer, Editor, Cinematography & Sound Design: Nicolás Escarpentier
Animator: Noura Adel
Commissioned by Somerset House for the PATH-AI residency program.

Your work often reflects on the societal impact of technology. How do you think the ongoing advancements in AI and machine learning will affect our collective cultural memories and historical narratives, especially considering the biases present in current technologies?

I think AI will continue to flatten our world, histories, and collective memories. It learns from the internet, which lacks nuanced discussion as recommendation algorithms have continually pushed us into extremely filtered online spaces. For example, in my latest film, “Where Am I From? (Ana Min Wein?)”, I searched for images of Iraq to match the vibrant and beautiful country my mother described when she grew up there in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, my search yielded only results relating to the US invasion of Iraq, omitting any representation of its culture or people. This process revealed a flattening of narrative and history by showing only war, destruction, and pain and erasing the collective memories of my ancestors before that.

When Safiya Noble documented that Google search was serving up racist images of the query “black girls”, this issue took years for Google to address only superficially by modifying the results of specific searches. Their approach failed to address the broader issue: AI yielding results steeped in a Western viewpoint, especially regarding Iraq, reinforcing narratives that have historically justified conflict.

Alexa, Call Mom! x Cannes XR Teaser (2019), © Nouf Aljowaysir

“I believe AI is progressively becoming a tool to help us cope with loss and grief”

In your project “Alexa, Call Mom!”, you explore the intersection of technology and the intimate spaces of human emotion. Can you elaborate on how you navigate the balance between technological innovation and preserving the sanctity of personal experiences, especially when dealing with themes of loss and memory?

I believe AI is progressively becoming a tool to help us cope with loss and grief. As mentioned, one-on-one conversations with AI can offer a sense of security and privacy. “Alexa, Call Mom!” touches on this aspect but also reminds me that our interactions are monitored for profit. It’s an interactive story where you must call your dead mother but are interrupted by Amazon ads and promotions, making you never fully reach “mom”.

It’s a reminder that nothing comes without a cost, and the details of our most private conversations are commodified and leveraged by advertisers to exploit our emotional vulnerabilities. While the trend of conversing with AI is going to persist, I remain cautious and encourage a critical examination of the targeted content and underlying capitalist motives we encounter, especially when we are most vulnerable.

Your work ‘Salaf’ critiques the AI’s stereotypical lens, particularly in the context of Middle Eastern identities. How do you approach the challenge of deconstructing these entrenched biases within AI, and what role do you believe artists play in reshaping these narratives?

I believe artists can play, experiment, and reverse the rigid functionality of technology to reshape narratives.

My work, “Salaf”, was a deliberate reversal of technology‘s functions. “Salaf” is a series of visual images that reflect an absence and an emptiness. As I encountered bias and prejudice in my search for my family’s story, I deliberately erased the “oriental” stereotypical figures from my images, using an AI segmentation technique called U-2 Net, and trained an AI on this “absent” dataset. This symbolised the erasure of my ancestors’ memories while confronting AI’s simplification of history and identity.

Could you share any references or influences that have significantly impacted your thinking and artistic practice?

The documentary “Coded Bias,” which follows MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini uncovering of racial bias in facial recognition software, profoundly impacted my approach to evaluating AI algorithms and investigating bias. The film illustrated how most AI systems operate as a “black box,” where even their creators don’t understand how these algorithms arrive at specific conclusions. This opacity is problematic when algorithms are deployed at scale, either commercially or politically, leaving their societal implications uncertain. Buolamwini inspired me to ask questions and push limits to understand AI’s inner workings.

Shirin Neshat is another huge inspiration of mine. She has created work that has always made me feel seen and understood, especially at a time when there was no one like her. Her work explores religion, identity, immigration, and displacement through photography, poetry, and symbolism. I relate to her themes and the lyrical, dreamlike reflections on her identity from the two very different cultures she has lived in.