BigGEM
2021
BigGEM is an AI chatbot programmed with audio clips of the artist's own voice. Made throughout the duration of her doctoral research, Gemma recorded her reading aloud the thesis, a body of work on the subject of the 'subversive voice' in performative art. Short sentences and phrases were programmed to match the most common trigger words or phrases which the software listens to and responds. Encounters with BigGEM (short for [Big]Generative Elocution Method) were recorded on Zoom with a range of participants throughout the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. This video work documents extracts of these conversations and reveals uncanny collisions of human consciousness with AI technology. With sincere thanks to BOM (Birmingham Open Media) for facilitating the build of the BigGEM technology and to all the participants who took part.