As part of a research project The Gendered Planet: The Political Aesthetics of Women's Bodies in Western Neoliberal Visual Culture, I started a conversation with Siri, the A.I. voice from my Apple phone to try to understand: Why most of our tech sounds so female?

The capitalist system is based on ranking individuals according to their gender, ethnicity, and race, pushing consumers to make irrational choices (Chomsky, 2011). As a consequence, the politics of western visual culture aesthetics regarding women’s bodies oppressive representation has been internalized by individuals and societies through time. 

After World War II, the corporations and the mass media promoted the “feminine mystique” and the men who had served in the military in World War II returned with the expectation of regaining their jobs harboring fantasies of wifely submission as payment for their soldiering sacrifices.

In the 1960s, women’s sexual freedom and their right to control childbearing crashed with the previously described roles but the capitalist economy used media to promote products targeting the female submission identities as they were still active in different socioeconomic contexts.

During the 1970s, the majority of both women and men believed that equal treatment for women was both practicable.

However, advertising, the media, and science, as a white male-dominated business, kept on using the before mentioned social identities to design and sell A. I. products. Siri and Alexa are, among other female virtual assistants, the result of social science research being used to impact on business because people tend to respond more positively to women’s voices.

This video juxtaposes the oppressive identities of the 60s and 70s female assistants in concordance with Siri’s to expose the role that cultural bias and technology play in our lives.

Exhibitions:

(2018). Algorithm bias. [Video]. Exhibited at Framed/Unframed Art Exhibition. Gallery KiT, Trondheim, Norway, April 04 – April 18.

(2019). Algorithm bias. [Video]. Exhibited at Experimental Video Art Exhibition. Thai-European Friendship EVA 16, Thailand, September 09 – September 15.

(2019). Algorithm bias. [Video]. Exhibited at Beside the Screens. Brasilia, Brasilia/Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 09 – June 30.