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// TFQ [trans_feminist_queer] TRIPTYCH //
(2021-2024)
The TFQ (trans_feminist_queer) triptych is an experimental triad of queer-feminist performance and new media projects that explore and analyze the conceptual-material "queering" of emerging technologies including virtual reality, artificial intelligence, large language models, and projection mapping. Sensory analyses of these projects, including their associated methodologies and methods, comprise the bulk of my doctoral dissertation within the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information entitled "Feeling Between Bodies: the Politics and Poetics of New Media's Queer Embodiments," supervised by Dr. Patrick Keilty.
I. JANE (2021-24)
JANE is a 90-minute one-act speculative fiction drama which follows the actions of three undergraduate students embroiled in a virtual reality deepfake pornography scandal—exploring issues of digital consent and the anonymity of digital platforms, queer and feminist sexual politics, and the consequences (or lack thereof) of actions we take virtually. JANE is inspired by growing ethical concerns around deepfakes, set in a near-distant future where the technology to create and market exploitative experiences is more accessible and more widely understood. As the conversation around the ethics of deepfakes and artificial intelligence explodes in popular culture, and as tools for fabricating images and voices become more readily available, we are now focusing on the reciprocal relationship between JANE’s text and design by developing a projections-led aesthetic to capitalize on the blurring of the virtual and physical realities of this story. We have specifically been focusing on shadows and silhouette-based illusions, simulations of motion capture, and using code and ASCII images to externalize and aestheticize how it feels for these characters to be entering an immersive online world, creating a theatrical language informed by the aesthetics and sensations of virtual reality technology. JANE's design workshops have been developed with support from Tarragon Theatre's Greenhouse Residency and Festival program, Cahoots Theatre, The Theatre Centre, Green Light Arts, Canadian Stage, Pat The Dog Theatre Creation, and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
II. Bisexual Bedroom Imaginaries (2022-23)
“Bisexual Bedroom Imaginaries” is an immersive collage designed for virtual reality which brings together formative queer spaces, objects, and writings from my adolescence into adulthood. In reimagining the bedroom as a “queered” liminal space—full of desire, intimacy, and secrecy—I have created a shifting archive of ephemera from various stages of my journey into queerness. From childhood drawings of princesses holding hands to sex toys, queer literature, and surrealist reconstructions of domestic objects, “Bisexual Bedroom Imaginaries” is a three-dimensional exploration of bisexual resonances within the intimate material-discursive spaces of memory, queerness, emerging technology, and the domestic. This project suggests new ways of preserving, performing, and safeguarding queer materials while emphasizing methods by which memory itself is queered, performed, and displayed.
Note: "Bisexual Bedroom Imaginaries" is currently awaiting publication in the forthoming edition of Hyperrhiz, the peer-reviewed online journal specializing in electronic literature, new media criticism, and net art. A full interactive archive will be available for viewing upon publication.
III. The Trans-Feminist-Queer Transformer (Algorithmic Poetry Project) (2023-24)
The Trans-Feminist-Queer Transformer (Algorithmic Poetry Project) is a fine-tuned Generative Pre-Trained Transformer 2 (GPT-2) model trained on databases of trans-feminist and queer lyrical poetry, created in association with the University of Toronto's Centre for Theatre, Drama, and Performance Studies's BMO Lab for Creative Research. Over the last few months, I have been experimenting with performing the TFQT's compositions in order to explore the following questions: What are the simultaneous possibilities and limits of engaging artificially intelligent models in collaborative creations of knowledge, and to what extent can trans-feminist-queer experiences and desires find resonance with machine generated performance materials?
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