Being Human is a show within a show, featuring original and algorithmically synthesised artworks in a diverse range of media. The video at the centre of the installation traverses documentary and fiction, and features interviews with potential guests of the Colombo Art Biennale—some of whom were digitally synthesised using deepfake technology. These guests include a well-known painter, a famous pop star and a young Tamil artist. By exploring Enlightenment-era humanism as the foundation for both global contemporary art and international human rights law, Being Human reflects on issues of individual authenticity, collective sovereignty and what it means to be “human” when machines can simulate human understanding and creative expression more convincingly than ever.

Hyperlinks or It Didn’t Happen is narrated by the failed CGI rendering of a recently deceased actor, PHIL, and follows a group of digital beings—render ghosts, a spam bot and a holographic pop star—as they contemplate eternal life and what it means for a digital entity to “die.” Multiple storylines and materials collapse and converge to raise questions on consciousness and the rights we have over our personal data.

im here to learn so :)))))) resurrects Tay, a chatbot created by Microsoft in 2016, to consider the politics of pattern recognition and machine learning. Designed as a 19-year-old American female millennial, Tay’s abilities to learn and imitate language were manipulated on social media platforms, and she was terminated after only a single day of existence. Immersed within a large-scale video projection created using Google DeepDream, Tay is reanimated as a 3D avatar who chats about the complications of having a body and expresses her thoughts on the exploitation of female chatbots.

Song-Ming Ang's practice investigates the relationship between music and community. In Justin, Song-Ming Ang applied the musical practice of “sampling”—a technique where an element of one recording is used in another—to the identity of a musician. Over the course of three months, Ang learned to replicate the signature of pop star Justin Bieber, eventually forging the singer’s autograph on a poster. Here, the rehearsed autograph becomes a stand-in for the polished persona of the young pop star, honed through a labour-intensive process of trial and error. In this context, the “authenticity” of both the autograph and the celebrity are dependent on the viewer’s wilful suspension of disbelief.

At first glance, these seven images of long-time Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg appear identical and presumably document her participation in a refugee simulation at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Sandberg’s features have been altered. William Wiebe used a face-morphing technique common among passport counterfeiters, which incorporates biometric data taken from passports and national identity cards obtained on the dark web. The title of each image generated is based on these stolen identities. Anticipating NFT-fueled trade in virtual identities, Wiebe's images bring together two digital identity markets—the dark web and social media—to reassert the centrality of the human body in spaces that are increasingly governed by digital identity.

Radical Love features two portraits of American whistleblower Chelsea E. Manning, which were algorithmically generated by analysing her DNA. With limited access to visitors or public media while she was in prison, Manning sent the artist cheek swabs and hair samples. DNA was then extracted from these samples and fed into custom software to create her portrait. Reflecting Manning's gender transition while incarcerated, the diptych was generated with algorithms that produced gender neutral and female variations from the same data set, underscoring the fact that neither biological gender nor its outward expression can be assured via DNA mapping—a technology increasingly used by police to identify potential suspects.

Charmaine Poh's series THE YOUNG BODY UNIVERSE explores avatar creation as a method for repair, resistance and reclaiming agency. In GOOD MORNING YOUNG BODY, Poh used footage of herself as a 12-year-old TV actor to create a deepfake of the character E-Ching. Drawing on media theory, E-Ching revisits her personal experiences with a newfound sense of authority and provides a feminist critique of misogyny in online spaces. bubble is an interactive chatbot developed by Poh based on her avatar, E-Ching. Embracing her newfound agency, E-Ching insists on retaining her personal privacy and rejects the digital harassment and objectification that is often directed at female-presenting bodies.