SINGAPORE – Faces of pop stars Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber will appear in the Singapore Art Museum’s (SAM) newest exhibition – but there is no guarantee they are verified or real.
Proof Of Personhood is one of SAM’s most existential and accessible shows. It asks what it means to be a real person in an age of fakes, and how digital art can be presented in a physical exhibition space.
The show, subtitled Identity And Authenticity In The Face Of Artificial Intelligence, launched the museum’s new gallery at Tanjong Pagar Distripark on Friday.
Mr Duncan Bass, the curator, calls it a “contemporary portraiture show”. The artists use face-morphing software, deep fake algorithms, computer-vision programmes and analogue forgery to call into question what it means to have a face in an age of digital manipulation.
Mr Bass says his goal is to cut through the technological jargon or marketing language of these pervasive digital technologies and present a show where visitors can understand the truth behind these complex systems.
Dr June Yap, director of curatorial and collections at SAM, says: “It’s not just a presentation of artists using digital media, but also artists analysing and responding to the effects of the digital media landscape which surrounds us and pretty much engulfs our contemporary art.”
She cites the impact of large-language models such as ChatGPT and AI-image generators like Midjourney, and ultimately distils the show into a timeless question posed by the father of computer science Alan Turing: Can machines think?
It is a show that is meant to disturb, says Dr Yap, who reminds viewers that “the origins of the Internet is that it is a military network – and now we use it for memes”.
Works on show that reveal the darker face of technology include a series of uncanny photographs of former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg by New York-based artist William Wiebe, made with a face-morphing technique popular among passport counterfeiters.
Other works question why originality is such a prized idea in the art world.
Mr Bass says: “Authenticity, in that sense, is really about art’s relation to an art market, when you need to ensure the authenticity of something to retain its value, which I think is less important to artists who work in digital spaces where it’s more about community.”
Proof Of Personhood, which comes on the heels of the museum’s online exhibition Open Systems in May, is part of SAM’s broader strategy to show and collect more work dealing with digital technologies. The museum will also announce the launch of its virtual galleries in November, says Dr Yap.
SAM’s third gallery adds 550 sq m of exhibition space to its existing 1,270 sq m across two galleries, further expanding the museum’s presence as the anchor tenant of a growing arts district at Tanjong Pagar Distripark (TPD).
The museum declined to reveal the budget for running Gallery 3.
While Dr Yap says there are no updates on the $90 million revamp under way at the museum’s Bras Basah location – it was last reported that the reopening of the site was delayed for a second time to 2026 – she did not dismiss the possibility of further expanding the museum’s footprint at TPD with a fourth gallery.
She says: “What we can foresee is that we are here for a few years, and so that’s why we are maximising some of these spaces. The nature of the spaces is very conducive for the kinds of presentations that you are seeing right now, with very highly configurable exhibitions.”
Three must-sees at Proof Of Personhood
Good Morning Young Body by Charmaine Poh (2021-2022)
Using found footage from her television career as a pre-teen actor in the early 2000s, Singaporean artist Charmaine Poh has created a deep fake character, E-Ching, in her video work.
Poh, who reflects on the “violence” of being a young actor, says: “I don’t think I understood the ramifications of my image being online and being on television.”
Ironically, by creating a digitally manipulated face, Poh reclaims her agency and image in a work that speaks back to this violence.
Radical Love by Heather Dewey-Hagborg (2015)
In Radical Love (2015), two 3D-printed portraits of American whistleblower Chelsea Manning make up for the then-incarcerated activist’s absence from the public eye.
Chicago-based artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg generated Manning’s face through algorithms based on DNA from cheek swabs and hair clippings sent by Manning from prison.
With two portraits – one gender-neutral and the other female – the artist questions the assumptions viewers have of the relationship between genetic material and physical characteristics.
Being Human by Christopher Kulendran Thomas with Annika Kuhlmann (2019/2022)
Projected onto a transparent screen in a dark room is an AI-generated Taylor Swift and other figures – the viewer is unsure if they are real – in a video installation asking what the role of human creative labour is in the age of creative machines.
When the lights in the room abruptly come on, the viewer is confronted with the physical space of the room – a curation of artworks by contemporary human artists as well as others generated by AI based on these artists.
Referencing the physical white cube, London and Berlin-based artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas, of Tamil descent, interrogates how art creates reality, and tells a story of the relationship between the emergence of contemporary art institutions and the end of civil war in Sri Lanka.
Book It/Proof Of Personhood
Where: Level 3, Gallery 3, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Road
When: Friday to Feb 25, 2024, 10am to 7pm daily
Admission: Free for Singaporeans and permanent residents; free for all visitors until Nov 24, after which general admission applies
Info: https://www.singaporeartmuseum.sg/art-events/exhibitions/proof-of-personhood
