‘For Your Consideration’ by Yuwei Pan
MA in Speculative Design and Social Change (2020-2021)
New York University, New York, NYU
Key supervisors: Nina Katchadourian
keywords: science fiction, artificial intelligence, synthetic media, deepfake, news, journalism, truthmaking, feminism, climate change
I want you to stop by all three windows. Look into the gallery itself, and then at each of the TV screens. What are you a witness to? Which world would you like to live in?
The moment a face appears on the screen, a set of political relationships is not only projected, but dynamically produced. Imagine what could happen if we have the power to produce relationships for the better? Deepfakes are digitally manipulated videos that realistically swap faces, so that a person appears to say or do something that they never said or did. This work is a meditation on how we perceive truth from videos, and particularly from news media. If what is “real” and what is “fake” isn’t so obvious, why not let it free us to conceive of and act out new realities?
In this project, I created a simulated newsroom with a newsdesk, camcorder and a green screen. I expose the process of truthmaking by revealing the process of the deepfake, showing the original raw footage in the back of the gallery and three different renderings of the same news footage in the front. On the very left, it is the state-owned tv station that I grew up watching in China with the male version of me as the broadcaster. In the middle, it is Walter Cronkite, who was considered the most trustworthy man in the United States. Lastly, on the right, it is the virtual influencer online who has a fabricated identity: Lil Miquela.
Yuwei Pan / MA Speculative Design & Social Change / NYU / 2020-21
Yuwei Pan (she/they) (MA ’21) is a New York-based multimedia artist, designer and activist. Their mission is to make the unimaginable and invisible into what’s tangible and believable, and to invigorate radical reimagination of our future.
Yuwei is currently a Master’s student at NYU Gallatin studying Speculative Design and Social Change and before that she received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She takes on a wide-reaching approach that spans immersive installations, performance, participatory art, dance and numerous other disciplines. Humor, identity, and social commentary are important elements in their work. Yuwei is the recipient of the Morris Horwitz Graduation Award in Photography and Service, Anderson Ranch Summer Program Award and Richard J. Koppenaal Scholarship, and her work has been shown at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Des Lee Gallery, and PS122 Gallery in New York.
