In an era before YouTube and ChatGPT ... the artist who experimented with the future
An AI chatbot on a screen reacts to a conversation by frowning, while visitors use a remote control to decide what happens to a main character trapped in a room. An artist sits in front of a camera and shares personal stories. These scenes are common online today, but American media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson had been exploring them through art for decades.
“Lynn Hershman Leeson: My [I]s,” at the Seoul Museum of Art's Seosomun Main Building, is the first solo museum exhibition of Leeson's work in Asia. She is considered a pioneer of media art. The exhibition presents about 200 works, including paintings, photographs, sculptures, media installations, videos and archival materials. It covers nearly six decades of her work, from the 1960s to recent years. Visitors can explore how she brought new technologies into art at an early stage, including interactive video, AI chatbots and stories that work like games.
Her work starts with a basic question: “Who am I?” Whenever a new technology has appeared, from video and LaserDisc to the internet, AI and, more recently, genetic engineering, she has used it to create art.
One of her best-known works, “Lorna” (1979–1984), is an interactive media artwork in which visitors can change how a story unfolds. It uses LaserDisc technology, which was new at the time. The main character, Lorna, has agoraphobia, a condition that causes a strong fear of being in situations where escape may be difficult. She stays inside her home and connects with the outside world only through the telephone and TV. Visitors use a remote control to make choices for Lorna. They can follow 36 different story sequences that lead to different endings. What happens depends on their choices, such as moving to Los Angeles, shooting at the TV or taking her own life.
In this way, Leeson created a story that lets viewers make choices decades before Netflix released the interactive film “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” in 2018. Lorna depends on her telephone and TV to stay connected to the world. This also reflects the isolation that many people today may feel when they communicate with others through screens.
Her work about the relationship between AI and humans is also important. “Agent Ruby” (1998–2002) is a chatbot on a website, created long before generative AI appeared. On the screen, Ruby chats with users, pursing her lips or smiling widely. The work explores the possibility that AI could become more than a machine that follows fixed commands. It asks whether AI could talk with people and build emotional connections with them.
Leeson continues to explore questions about AI in her more recent work. “Logic Paralyzes the Heart,” shown in the main exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale, is a video for which she wrote the script together with ChatGPT-3. Through a conversation between a human and AI, it examines how technology is used in war and to control society. In the video, the AI tells the human, “We are both trans,” and suggests, “Let’s change the history of the future together.” The work shows that technology has two sides: it can be used to control people, but it can also help create new relationships and possibilities.
Leeson was also ahead of her time in the way she recorded her own life. In her “Electronic Diaries” series, which she began in 1984, she sits in front of a camera and shares deeply personal stories. These include violence and abuse she experienced at home as a child, the pain of her marriage and her experience working as a call girl to support her children. Her practice of recording her life and sharing it on video is similar to how people today can create content and post their daily experiences and thoughts on YouTube.
Leeson was also interested in how people's identities change because of their social roles and the way others see them. In the 1970s, she invented a fictional character called “Roberta Breitmore” and lived as this character for several years. She did more than change her appearance with blonde hair and red lipstick. She also carefully developed Roberta's way of speaking and moving. She opened a bank account and obtained a driver's license in Roberta's name, giving the fictional character a place in real-world institutions and social relationships. Leeson was also influenced by Marcel Duchamp, who created a female persona named “Rrose Sélavy” and had photographs taken of himself as this character.
“CyberRoberta,” made in 1996, is a doll with a camera and a webcam in each eye. Visitors can go to its website, turn the doll's head remotely and control where it looks. The work shows how people watch others, how people look at others without their knowledge, and how technology can extend the human body.
Leeson's interests also include genetic engineering. Since the 2010s, she has explored how technologies in the life sciences have turned even the human body into data that can be changed. “LYNNHERSHMAN Antibody” is a bio-artwork created with the pharmaceutical company Novartis. It was made by combining amino acid sequences that match the letters in her name, Lynn Hershman.
By continually exploring new technologies, including interactive media, AI and genetic engineering, Leeson has kept returning to the basic question, “Who am I?” Her work explores the many identities people form through their relationships with technology. Her question, “Who am I, and where do I end?” remains important and relevant today. The exhibition runs through February 21 next year.
[Reporter Jung Yoo-jung]