Credits: Elisa Giardina Papa, Cleaning Emotional Data, 2020. Installation view, Algotaylorism, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France, 2020. Courtesy of the Artist. Commissioned by Aksioma, Institute of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, and Kunsthalle Mulhouse. Photo Sébastien Bozon

Cleaning Emotional Data

Elisa Giardina Papa

Honorary Mention

http://www.elisagiardinapapa.org

„Cleaning Emotional Data“ ist eine Drei-Kanal-Videoinstallation, die sich den schlecht bezahlten Mikroarbeiter*innen in aller Welt widmet, die Daten „bereinigen“ um Algorithmen zur Erkennung von Emotionen zu trainieren. Zu ihren Aufgaben zählen das Beschriften, Kommentieren und Validieren großer Datenmengen, die das Funktionieren von KI-Systemen überhaupt erst möglich machen. 2019 arbeitete die Künstlerin selbst von Palermo aus für mehrere nordamerikanische Unternehmen, die „saubere Datensätze“ bereitstellen. Zu ihren Aufgaben gehörte die Kategorisierung von Emotionen, die Beschreibung von Gesichtsausdrücken und das Aufnehmen von Selbstportraits, mit denen dreidimensionale Figuren animiert wurden. The „Cleaning of Emotional Data“ dokumentiert diese Mikroaufgaben und zeichnet gleichzeitig eine Geschichte der Emotionen nach, die die Methoden und psychologischen Theorien hinterfragt, die dem Mapping von Gesichtsausdrücken zugrunde liegen.

Credits: Elisa Giardina Papa, Cleaning Emotional Data, 2020. Installation view, Algotaylorism, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France, 2020. Courtesy of the Artist. Commissioned by Aksioma, Institute of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, and Kunsthalle Mulhouse. Photo Sébastien Bozon

Credits

Elisa Giardina Papa (IT)

Commissioned by:
Aksioma, Institute of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, and Kunsthalle Mulhouse

Biography

Elisa Giardina Papa (IT) is an Italian artist whose work investigates gender, sexuality, and labor in relation to neoliberal capitalism and the borders of the Global South. Her work has been exhibited at the 59th Venice Biennale (The Milk of Dreams), MoMa (Modern Mondays), the Whitney Museum (Sunrise/Sunset Commission), Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2018, among others. Giardina Papa received an MFA from RISD, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in film, media, and gender studies at the University of California Berkeley. She lives and works in New York and Sant’Ignazio, Sicily.

Jury Statement

Elisa Giardina Papa worked remotely for several North American “human-in-the-loop” companies that provide “clean” data sets to train AI algorithms to detect emotions. Among the tasks she performed was the taxonomization of emotions, the annotation of facial expressions, and the recording of her own image to animate three-dimensional characters. Cleaning Emotional Data documents these microtasks while simultaneously tracing a history of emotions that questions the methods and psychological theories underpinning facial expression mapping. The tech industry rarely opens up about their philosophical foundation of “What is Human?” Their modeling of emotion and behavior stays opaque. Through three documentary film clips, Elisa gives us insight into the model from the bottom up. The AI model treats single nouns as sufficient to describe complex emotions such as joy or disgust. The process of applying nouns to emotional states is tellingly called “labeling.” The nouns are directly translated into cultures as different as Arab, Spanish, or Malaysian.
As labels, these nouns are then attached to pixelated portraits in a working process called “click work,” where somebody sitting in front of a screen has to decide as fast as humanly possible to click on a label, in this way attaching it to a never-ending flow of portraits. Time for introspection is scarce, since the pay is low. With such training, algorithmic bias is systematically built into any AI application. To reduce algorithmic bias, work has to start with the creation of meaningful models which should then be trained with quality data. For STARTS, Elisa’s work serves as a beacon to direct the development of a European AI, grounded in our naturally given diversity of cultures and languages.

View full Jury Statement here.