What does it mean when “fake” images are indistinguishable from “real” ones? The rapid rise of AI generated images and advancements in VFX and photo manipulation has made it harder for us to distinguish between authenticity and artifice, animate and inanimate, fact and fiction.

In this week’s episode of Tomorrow Is The Problem, host Dr. Donna Honarpisheh sits down with media historian, theorist, and associate professor in culture and media studies at the New School, Deborah Levitt and artist Adam Putnam to explore the tense, evolving relationship between AI, the uncanny valley, and the body.

Tomorrow is the Problem is brought to you by the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center and is produced in partnership with FRQNCY Media.

The uncanny is an unsettling experience, bringing to light that which has been hidden underneath the surface. Artist Lorraine O’Grady is an agent of this unsettling effect. Throughout her prolific career, Lorraine O’Grady has used her art to challenge boundaries imposed upon Black Artists and to problematize binary thinking.

In this week’s episode of Tomorrow is the Problem, Host Dr. Donna Honarpisheh sits down with Dr. Stephanie Sparling Williams, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and Harry Burke, an art critic and PhD candidate at Yale University, to discuss Lorraine O’Grady’s work.

Audio excerpts of Lorraine O’Grady from the 2018 Soul of A Nation symposium, an event hosted by the Tate Modern and Crystal Bridges Museum

Tomorrow is the Problem is brought to you by the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center and is produced in partnership with FRQNCY Media.

You have a data ghost. The excess of information we share online – photos, posts, messages, locations – creates a digital doppelganger that blurs the line between human and non-human, living and dead. Artists like U5 and Bill Viola reckon with this excess of image, data, and self-surveillance creating works that grapple with the uncanny in its digital manifestations.

In this week’s episode of Tomorrow Is The Problem, host Dr. Donna Honarpisheh sits down with anonymous artist collective U5 member, Berit Seidel and Kris Ravetto-Biagioli, a professor of cinema and digital media at UCLA, to discuss surveillance technology and the digital uncanny in the works of U5 and Bill Viola.

Tomorrow is the Problem is brought to you by the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center and is produced in partnership with FRQNCY Media.