Project Overview
AI-generated art is everywhere—but why does it all look the same? Artificial Us is an immersive, interactive installation that critically examines power structures and representation in mainstream image generation models. By integrating fine-tuned machine learning models and motion tracking, the piece constructs a metaphorical generative narrative on neo-extractivism through a Latin American lens.
In the northern border between Argentina and Chile lies the Lithium Triangle, an area that holds more than 75% of the world’s lithium supply. Like many other resources from our region, lithium is extracted by foreign corporations from the Global North, only to be refined into high-tech products—batteries, GPUs, and data centers—that we consume at inflated prices. The cycle doesn’t end there: waste from these same industries is sent back, dumped in places like the Atacama Desert, creating toxic landscapes that bear the cost of technological progress. AI does not exist in a vacuum—it depends on material extraction, labor, and infrastructure, much of which is sustained by exploitative practices that mirror colonial histories of resource extraction.
Artificial Us makes these hidden systems tangible. Latin American identities, landscapes, and artistic traditions are often misrepresented, stereotyped, or entirely absent in AI-generated content. The models reinforce dominant cultural narratives while erasing others. This installation turns that abstraction into an embodied experience: by placing the audience inside a 3D, body-tracked environment, the system transforms them from passive observers into active agents navigating these power structures. AI-generated visuals shift and respond to user movement, exposing how representation in machine learning is not just an aesthetic issue but a reflection of deeper structural inequalities.
This project doesn’t just critique AI’s biases—it reclaims agency over the medium itself. Instead of relying on pre-trained models that reproduce Western perspectives, Artificial Us fine-tunes its own dataset, built from images that represent our places, our histories, and our people. The result is an AI system that doesn’t just generate—it listens, reacts, and co-creates in ways that feel personal rather than prescribed. The piece challenges how generative models frame cultural narratives, offering an alternative where AI becomes a site of resistance and cultural preservation rather than erasure.
By immersing the audience in this evolving, AI-driven space, Artificial Us provokes a fundamental question: Who controls the narratives we consume—and who gets left out?
This project is being made in collaboration with Matias Piña.