Datafication Act 1 – May Ian Valley 0101
Yarli Allison (CA)
Datafication Act 1 – May Ian Valley 0101 is part of a moving-image series that Yarli Allison develops to explore themes of digital humanity. In this looping nightmare “Act 1”, she imagines daily impacts of AI emergence and gamification on one’s behavior – taking the most intimate sexual encounters as an example. Viewers will join the data-mining authorities to monitor May Ian’s (美人) machine-readable body, known as “Subject 06”. In the control room, all the subjects’ sex acts are constantly being extracted and analyzed. They will be rewarded unpredictably every time a new data pattern is detected, creating an addictive effect.
This is the first time Yarli Allison returns to hand-drawing to mimic a digital interface. The labor-intensive hand-making process allows her to play with alternative artistic decisions, and question the relationship between art-making and digital AI tools. Combining fiction, performance, sexual acts, 3D modeling, and electronic music, the work is a “fried rice”, swinging in between surveillance systems control and care.
Yarli Allison is a Canadian born, UK and Paris-based artist with a multidisciplinary approach that traverses sculpture, performance, digital, film, drawing, and installation. She/them graduated in 2017 with an MFA in Sculpture from Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Her works have been exhibited and screened internationally, e. g. at FORMAT21 Festival (online), The One in Hong Kong, the Queer Arts Festival in London, Arthouse Vienna, Videodrome2 in Marseille or ASC Gallery in London. Recent grants include a Hong Kong Art Council Project Grant and a Canada Council for the Arts Travel Grant, both in 2020. Allison is a member of Asia-Art-Activism.