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UNSTABLE EVIDENCE

Francesca Panetta, Halsey Burgund, Magnus Bjerg, Shehani Fernando / United Kingdom, Denmark, United States/ 2023

You’ve gone viral in a social media video; but it’s not “you”, rather a digital version that looks and sounds just like you making statements you would never say.

As AI and deepfake technologies develop at a startling pace, evidence is becoming destabilised. We must prepare ourselves. Unstable Evidence explores a world of AI-produced mis- and disinformation that is just around the corner. Using perhaps the strongest material possible – the audience members themselves and the subject matter they most abhor – it provides a shocking wake-up call on the personal and societal consequences of AI-driven synthetic media creation.

The work uses AI-enhanced techniques – digital humans, voice cloning and synthetic lip-syncing – to present audiences with a series of social-media style videos in which they see themselves making controversial statements that they strongly disagree with. From anti-vax propaganda to cancel culture, white nationalism to gay marriage and gun rights, audience members quickly and viscerally become aware of how easy it is to have their own image, video or voice manipulated.

Through engaging with the educational aspect of the experience, audiences will become more aware of synthetic media and understand the pros and cons of this rapidly developing technology. They will learn what is needed to minimize the risks to themselves and society at large. From legislation to transparency, to mitigating technological interventions – audiences will understand what is needed to steer this technology in a pro-social direction and keep their own identities safe.

Francesca Panetta

Director

Biography:

Francesca is an Emmy award-winning immersive artist, journalist, curator and most recently, Director of the University of Arts London’s new  AKO Storytelling Institute. Working at the intersection of artistic practice and social change, the Institute aims to develop the discipline of storytelling-for-change. She led the Guardian’s vanguard storytelling initiatives for over a decade including podcasting, immersive features and virtual reality. Her work has been shown in museums and film festivals around the world, as well as venues such as the White House and European Commission.

Halsey Burgund

Director

Biography:

Halsey Burgund is a media artist and Emmy-winning interactive director whose work focuses on the combination of modern technologies – from mobile phones to artificial intelligence – with fundamentally human “technologies”, primarily language, music and the spoken voice. He is the creator of Roundware, the open source contributory audio AR platform, which has been used to create art and educational installations for cultural organizations internationally. Halsey was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, a Research Affiliate at the MIT Media Lab and is currently a fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab and an affiliate in Harvard’s metaLAB.

Magnus Bjerg

Producer

Biography:

Magnus has done editorial development for the last seven years in the biggest Danish newsrooms. Most recently at TV 2 Denmark where his team has won numerous awards for digital journalism, including honors from the Society for News Design Scandinavia and the from the Association of Danish Media for the best digital story of the year. He has lead major projects as the digital election coverage at TV 2 and is the president of the Danish Online News Association. He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2018.

Shehani Fernando

Producer

Biography:

Shehani Fernando is an award-winning immersive director and producer, and founder of Indigo Storm, a new immersive studio. Her most recent project is ‘The Musuem of Imagined Futures’, a VR experience about environmental futures, commissioned as part of Unboxed’s StoryTrails project. Her work has ranged from producing AR app ‘Landscapes Reimagined’ for the Tate and Shanghai Museum, and the award-winning ‘The Waiting Room VR, to directing a number of acclaimed VR experiences for the Guardian’s in-house studio. She is also the presenter of The StoryFutures Academy Podcast.