Avital Meshi’s The New Virtuvian (2022) uses AI to experiment with human influenced biases engineered into common technologies. Much of Meshi’s work centers around similar experiments—exploiting the flaws behind the AI technology which our society relies so heavily upon. In this piece, Avital performs a range of fluid motions with her own body and a chair under the watch of AI technology to examine how the AI depicts different poses and positions of the body and object. 

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The New Virtuvian (2022)

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Avital Meshi The New Vitruvian
AI technology reads Avital as 80% cat, 66% person.
Avital Meshi The New Virtivuan
AI technology reads Avital crouched on the chair as 65% chair.
Avital Meshi The New Virtuvian
AI technology reads Avital bent over on the chair as 55% horse.
Avital Meshi The New Virtuvian
AI technology depicts Avital as 51% refrigerator.

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Check out Digital America’s Q+A with Avital, and her previous work Deconstructing Whiteness (2020).

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Avital Meshi

Avital Meshi is a California-based New Media Artist. She creates interactive installations and performances, inviting viewers to engage with new technology and see themselves through its lens. The entanglement between the body and technology reveals unique aspects of identity and social connections and allows moments of agency to emerge. Meshi is a Ph.D. student at the Performance Studies Graduate Group at UC Davis. She holds an MFA from The Digital Arts and New Media program at UC Santa Cruz and a BFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She also holds an MSc in behavioral biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.