Ada Chen

Ada Chen is currently a sophomore enrolled in the Design & Media Conservatory at the Orange County School of the Arts in California. She hopes to study and make a career that works at the intersection of art, technology, and entrepreneurship in the near future. In the fast-paced world of AI, Ada works every day to grasp the knowledge that will allow her to maximize her potential whilst examining the ethics and place it has in society and in her artistic practice.

We Have Enough Public Sculptures of Men Sitting on Horses.

Inspired by this quote by Agnes Denes, “I decided we had enough public sculptures of men sitting on horses,” this project is designed to question the misogynistic, racist, and authoritarian history of the Confederacy by examining the facets that make up a Confederate memorial. Portraying what a collection of AI models considered the “average commemorative sculpture in the United States” through the makeup of 214 uniquely found images of Confederate monuments, the audience can find quite a visually startling (yet not surprising) pattern: they all depict a man holding a weapon in a generic stoic stance. By coding agents that assist in all parts of the mosaic-making process, this work combines the strengths of autonomous AI with human judgement to reflect on a broader injustice: the promotion of white supremacy and the subconscious prejudice ingrained in modern societies.

Link to project: here

Process Image