On 9 August 2022, TOPO launched a new season of programming on the theme of fluidity with the generative work Selfgen by Quebec artist Marion Schneider (elle/iel). The work was exhibited simultaneously on the TOPO and Mutek websites for a month, as part of the festival's virtual section. Mutek of 2022. TOPO has decided to continue exhibiting Selfgen by a window projection in November and December 2022. On Thursday 17 November at 5pm, at the launch of the video installation, the web section of Selfgen was available on a large touch screen.
Selfgen evokes the idea of queer identity and self-representation through advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning processes. Working with a database of over 500 selfies Marion Schneider teaches an artificial intelligence algorithm (GAN) to create new images of herself from the personal data accumulated on her mobile phone. By manipulating the learning parameters and the images provided, an infinite number of self-portraits are generated on demand, whose abstraction evokes fluidity, impermanence and ambiguity.
Marion Schneider
A non-binary digital artist, Marion Schneider (elle/iel) has a degree in Visual and Media Arts from UQAM (Montreal) and in Digital Design from the École nationale supérieure Olivier de Serres (Paris). Obsessed with the sea, words and machines, her artistic research focuses on the poetic and engaging potential of digital tools. His interdisciplinary practice focuses on sentimentality and how it is updated through technology.
Rooted in hacktivist ideology, his work is often autonomous, permeable and looped, incorporating the sharing and reuse of data. He is interested in themes relating to nature and virtuality, as well as gender, intimacy, distance and memory; his work explores the ways in which each of these subjects intersect.
Schneider has shown his work in a number of exhibitions in Montreal and Quebec City, including at ICRA-X, Place des Arts, Art Mûr, and the Galerie de l'UQAM. He received an honourable mention from UQAM for his bachelor's degree, the McAbbie Foundation bursary for excellence, and the Jean-Pitre and Claude Leclerc prize.
