Karla Gruss

In Uncanny Algorithms, I explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and human identity and the eerie distortions that emerge from their entanglement. This research-driven project interrogates the failures and malfunctions of generative AI, using its dysfunctions to create surreal, fragmentary representations of the human form. These digital sculptures, unsettling yet familiar, occupy natural landscapes, blurring the boundary between organic and artificial, body and environment.

Rooted in critical analysis, Uncanny Algorithms consists of 20 pages of research and theory examining AI’s role in reshaping human perception, reality, and sense of corporeality. This section is followed by 50 pages of visual compositions, in which AI-generated figures are embedded in landscapes, suggesting the tension between the hyperreal and the grotesque.

The project echoes the disorienting aesthetic of Francis Bacon, exploring digital flesh as a site of transformation, error, and existential ambiguity. Embracing AI’s limitations, Uncanny Algorithms reflects on the contemporary condition—one in which human identity is increasingly filtered through technological mediation and the uncanny becomes an unavoidable presence in our digital and physical realities. It draws parallels between AI’s processes and the human unconscious, where pattern recognition and abstract associations produce dreamlike, often irrational thoughts, visions, and images. Much like surrealist art, the unexpected and bizarre results become a powerful resource for artistic exploration, questioning the boundaries between the digital and the organic, the real and the imagined.