#exmachina

Behind the scenes: Ex-Machina. Oscar Isaac as Nathan Bateman

Ex machina, Ava. Comps and Gelli plate made with plastic money, fruit net, paper cut outs

I have been meaning to make a gelli animation fanart on Exmachina for a while. It has become one of my favourite only because there are some really great crits around the film. It’s one of those films where the director’s bias becomes the main character once you de-center Ava and focus on Kyoko and the other bots left as body parts throughout the lab

I would suggest reading Daniella Wong’s essay:  Dismembered Asian/American Android Parts in Ex Machina as ‘Inorganic’ Critique which focuses on techno orientalism and post-human identity in context to Asian American relationship

I found the film relevant when I was trying to understand Open Ai and its learning models especially Midjourney etc- and this foolish idea that Ai is sentient and creative. It was recently uncovered that Chat GPT was outsourcing their moderation to Kenyan workers via a third party company Samasource. Just like Kyoko they end up doing bulk of the work without proper compensation and protection while Ava (The Ai) is seen as creating beautiful images and spouting philosophy.