Keynote / Performance
Specifically, it considers moderation policies and representational possibilities of generative AI through the figure of the twink, a figure that flirts with boundaries between boyhood and adulthood, innocence and carnality, feminine and masculine.
Part of a larger project about what I call "computational hexes," which focuses on some of the weird, witchy, and queer entanglements of our algorithmic ordinary, "Glitchcraft" is an ongoing set of experiments with generative AI that focus on the figure of the twink. The twink represents an important boundary case for AI insofar as he is a figure that flirts with boundaries between boyhood and adulthood, innocence and carnality, feminine and masculine. Once one articulation in the gay lexicon of desire, alongside others like bears, otters, bulls, otters, wolves, and pigs, (oh my!), twinks have crossed over into the mainstream. We now live, it seems, in the age of the twink. Given their dual proximity to queer and barely legal sex, twinks seem to make many algorithms blush or, more accurately, refuse to generate an output that might cross an opaque boundary. My aim, however, is not merely to point out the heteronormative biases embedded in these technologies but to embrace the glitch to seduce the machine into hallucinating outputs worth thinking about and playing with. The performance will have a real-time create a twink component!
Biography
Shaka McGlotten is Professor of Media Studies and Anthropology and Chair of the Gender Studies Program at Purchase College. They are the author of Dragging: Or, In the Drag of a Queer Life and Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality, as well as numerous chapters and articles.