XXX Machina is an immersive, computational multimedia installation exploring how AI disrupts and reshapes erotic desire, identity, and intimacy. Operating as an “autonomous desire machine,” it generates synthetic erotic imagery, deepfakes of the artist’s face, via recursive diffusion models analyzing prompts from AI porn sites. Initially resembling conventional explicit imagery, closer inspection reveals disturbing ruptures and bodily impossibilities: fragmenting, recombining, detaching from stable corporeal reference into uncanny assemblages. Engaging Lacanian psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and Bataille’s notions of eroticism, XXX Machina examines how AI pornography, by offering endless on-demand gratification, alters human longing, intimacy, and the body. The jury spent many hours discussing this work and they would like to acknowledge the impact it had on them.
Prix Ars Electronica 2025
Award of Distinction – Artificial Life & Intelligence
