Anonymous Conjecture

Anonymous Conjecture

#identity&representation #womanhood #generativeArt

Anonymous Conjecture is a generated poster that discusses the gender bias in the context of anonymous identities and forces people to make new conjectures: the anonymous can be women.

Date Spring 2019

Toolkits Processing, P5.js

Publication International Symposium on Computational Media Art (ISCMA) 2019 @ City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Speech International Symposium on Computational Media Art (ISCMA) 2019 “Identity and Representation“ Paper Session @ City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Exhibition “the womanhood project“ @ NYU Abu Dhabi Art Center, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Two year ago, my Art Professor gave us a really interesting task: given hints, draw your own Satoshi Nakamoto.

“Satoshi said to be 37 year old resident in Japan, but an analysis of Satoshi’s posts in the Bitcoin forum reflect the hours of activity to be during the day of Eastern time of North America and the standard hours of the center, which would include parts of Central and South America. On another note Satoshi’s perfect use of english could suggest that the person could be English, or have had an intensive english education. ”

Surprisingly, I found nobody had a female Satoshi. What’s more, if we go over all the candidates for the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, none of them is female? Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, Dorian Nakamoto… Not only Satoshi Nakamoto, when it comes to the anonymous, it seems that people tend to assume them to be males.

Break the bias through art.

We are not living in a world that has no female programmers, no female Formula One drivers, no female street artists, no female rockers. On the contrary, we have brilliant female talents in all fields. It’s not even an expectation for the future, it’s already a fact. The question is, why it is so hard for us to believe a fact. Even a person is anonymous, we don’t want this person to be woman. I want to force people to make new conjectures: The anonymous can be women. Yes, we admit we do have stereotype, we do have an existing idea of these hidden identities. However, we can break that frame, can jump out of that box. What the project does is to present an image of the anonymous person that people normally have and break that image by revealing a female body figure gradually.

Some people may ask: What’s the purpose of this project? Do you want us to find a woman candidate so that we can actually figure out who Satoshi is? Or is it even necessary to figure out?

I’d like to point it out that, the aim of this project is not force people to get real answers, but just to force people to make a new conjecture, just to do this action itself. The project does not intend to offer a good answer to the identities of these anonymous people. Conversely, it wants to provide more answers to the roles of women. Women can do things these anonymity do. Women can do things that we assume they cannot.