Pauline Batista’s practice questions the impulse to render information, bodies and the “quantified self” transparent. She examines the implications of the blurred lines between artificial and organic, virtual and physical, inert and animate and highlight our society’s misguided aim at human perfection and cyborg immortality.
The series The Algorithm Will See You Now (2017) is a way to imagine and forewarn a future with wide implications. With technological advancements, in particular AI and deep learning algorithms, expert medical machines could soon examine us—exposing the fragility of the human body as one with limitations, prone to diseases, in need of medical help and ultimately with a relatively short expiration date. A human can only work so many hours and is constantly aging, yet a machine can be configured to work non-stop. On another level our choices in how to make these machines in our image, including the gendering of robot AI into acquiescent female assistants who are there to please, needs to be examined as our sci-fi dreams and nightmares become reality.
Pauline Batista
Contributor
Pauline Batista was born in 1988 in Rio de Janeiro, now based in London. She graduated from USC with a degree in International Relations and completed an MFA at Goldsmith University. In Brazil her work has been profiled in magazines like Veja and RG, while in the UK her work was selected by Elephant Art Magazine as an “artist to watch” out of last year’s MFA graduation shows. In addition her recent show Fatal Softness was reviewed by MAP Magazine and featured on AQNB.