SPACE HEROINES (How to kick ass in space or The bias of AI)
5/13

Series of female super heroines who maintain law and order in the universe and fight against space debris. The work is conceived as a commentary on male-dominated space travel and of male-determined self-conceptions of space conquest. It was created in the context of an artist residency at European Space Agency (ESA/ESOC) in Darmstadt that Güntzel held in 2022. The works were generated using the open source DALL.E 2 AI from descriptions in natural language. Since then, Güntzel has continued to further develop the work, which simultaneously questions the biased practice of AI in which “heroines” are standardized as white, young, slender, mostly blond, scantily clad, over-sexualized women. More inclusive and diverse images emerged only when prompts explicitly contradicted these norms. Even then, the AI often failed to produce a more inclusive image or the results are so impaired that they are unusable (images that lacked colour, figures without faces, etc.). The series is more relevant than ever after Trump instructed NASA “‘to drop everything’ to scrub public sites of mentioning of DEI, indigenous people, environmental justice, and women in leadership” -> https://www.404media.co/nasa-dei-drop-everything-executive-order/

[Swaantje Güntzel, Space Heroines / plus size heroine with short dark hair wearing a turtle neck fighting orbital debris comic style, 2022/23, Series]

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