As digital spaces and technologies increasingly shape our daily interactions and self-expression, understanding the intersection of technology and identity becomes crucial. Queerness as Gap is a practice-based, artistic research project that investigates the impact of digital interfaces and artificial intelligence on queerness in online environments, focusing particularly on the restrictions that these technologies reproduce or introduce.
Drawing on research in Science and Technology Studies (STS), media studies, and communication studies, the project explores through artistic research how machine learning technologies, such as facial recognition software, neural machine translation, and conversational AI, influence and constrain the expression of queerness online. The findings will enhance our theoretical and practical knowledge of the relationship between technology and society, particularly concerning marginalized groups, and suggest a definition of queerness through the gap that digital interfaces and AI introduce.
This PhD project is supervised by Dr. Johannes Bruder at Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW (CH), Prof. Dr. Manuela Naveau and Prof. Dr. Alexis Dworsky at University of Arts Linz (AT).
The project is funded by the SNSF DOC.CH research grant for the period 2024–2028.