In the [Left Hand]: Trickster <Shapeshifter> the viewer is introduced to a fabricated environment of layered realities of corporeal forms, focusing on the mechanics of how hands are used to communicate, gesture, and ‘do work’, yet remain elusive for synthetic media (i.e deepfakes) to reliably recreate. The project explores a sensory reading of emerging technologies, current technological mechanisms of dehumanization through disembodiment, and [left] hand gesturing as a connection to more wholistic manifestations of divinatory practices. A left-handed practice—as it relates to technology—is the embodiment of a trickster energy found across cultural mythologies. The trickster is a chaos agent meant to sow discord and confusion until a shift in behaviour or consciousness ultimately leads to a lucidity that wouldn’t otherwise have been reached. Artificial intelligence and deepfakes more broadly, are the ‘representational tricksters ‘in the simulacra of our digital reality. Within this trickery, there is no clear distinction between reality and unreality, truth and depiction, authenticity and synthesis; there is only the illusion of categorization and the boundless expanse that exposes the mind’s vulnerability to manipulation. 

In the frame of Uncertain Intelligences