Zizi - Queering the Dataset aims to tackle the lack of representation and diversity in the training datasets often used by facial recognition systems. The video was made by disrupting these systems* and re-training them with the addition of drag and gender fluid faces found online. This causes the weights inside the neural network to shift away from the normative identities it was originally trained on and into a space of queerness. Zizi - Queering The Dataset lets us peek inside the machine learning system and visualise what the neural network has (and hasn’t) learnt. The work is a celebration of difference and ambiguity, which invites us to reflect on bias in our data driven society.
The Zizi Project (2019 - ongoing) is a collection of works by Jake Elwes exploring the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and drag performance. Drag challenges gender and explores otherness, while A.I. is often mystified as a concept and tool, and is complicit in reproducing social bias. Zizi combines these themes through a deepfake, synthesised drag identity created using machine learning. The project explores what AI can teach us about drag, and what drag can teach us about A.I.
Zizi: Queering the Dataset (2019) was originally commissioned as a seven channel video installation by Experiential AI at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Inspace, The University of Edinburgh.

Exhibitions

Surreal Futures, Max Ernst Museum, Brühl, Germany (2024)
Zizi - Queering the Dataset (solo display), Gazelli Art House, Mayfair, London, UK (2023)
Data • Glitch • Utopia, Gazelli Art House, London, UK (2023)
Glitch. Die Kunst Der Störung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2023)
Riposte - Queer Art Techno Rave, Electrowerkz, London, UK (2022)
UKINTER:ACTIVE - Breaking The Code CPH:DOX, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (2022)
The Horror Show! A Twisted Tale Of Modern Britain, Somerset House, London, UK (2022)
Among the Machines, Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK (2021)
BIAS, Science Gallery Dublin, Dublin, Ireland (2021)
Zizi - Queering the Dataset, Gazelli Art House, London, UK (2021)
You and AI (touring), Onassis Foundation and Future Everything, Gazometro Rome, Italy (2020)
Critical Borders: Radical (Re)visiions of AI, Center for the Future of Intelligence, Cambridge University, UK (2020)
You and AI, Onassis Foundation, Pedion tou Areos Park, Athens, Greece (2020)
The Third Gender, A.K.T, Pforzheim, Germany (2020)
PRETERNATURAL: Jake Elwes Solo show, Data Lates, Inspace Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2019)
Real-Time Contraints (virtual browser extension, COVID-19), Arebyte Gallery, London, UK (2019)
Fluid Bodies, E-WERK Freiburg, Germany (2019)

Jake Elwes (b. 1993) is a media artist who explores machine learning and artificial intelligence. Their work finds poetry and narrative in these systems' success and failures, their sophistication, and limitations, while investigating their code and ethics. In notable work, the Zizi Project, Elwes exposes AI bias by queering datasets with drag performers, simultaneously demystifying and subverting AI systems.

Elwes lives and works in London, having studied at The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (2013-17). The artist's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Somerset House, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Frankfurter Kunstverein; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Honor Fraser Gallery, LA; Fundacion Telefonica Museum, Madrid; Ars Electronica, Austria; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Sculpture in the City, London; Science Gallery Dublin; RMIT Gallery, Melbourne; Onassis Foundation, Athens; Arebyte Gallery, London; E-WERK Freiburg, Germany; Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin; Nature Morte, Delhi, India; Centre for the Future of Intelligence, UK, and they have been featured on TV: ZDF aspekte (Germany) and the BBC Arts (UK).