Ars Electronica 2023 – Who Owns the Truth?

As Europe’s leading festival for art, technology, and society, Ars Electronica 2023 brought together global voices to critically examine the politics of knowledge, power, and perception. Under the theme “Who Owns the Truth?”, the festival explored contested territories of interpretive authority—probing how truth is constructed, claimed, and mediated in an increasingly digitized world.

Presented as part of the European Union Prize for Citizen Science exhibition in the iconic POSTCITY building, #SOPHYGRAY by Nadja Verena Marcin was featured as a demo presentation. Shown on a monitor, the work included documentation of the latest performance and immersive installation at the 20th Media Art Biennale WRO 2023, accompanied by a computer showcasing the interactive web app, complete with links to app stores.

#SOPHYGRAY is a feminist audio bot that answers user questions in philosophical, humorous, and subversive ways—drawing from an evolving intersectional feminist canon authored by a growing network of contributors. The work challenges the stereotypical design of virtual assistants—often encoded with submissive, feminized personas—and brings attention to the cultural values and gender biases embedded in everyday technologies. It critiques the objectification and distortion of women in digital media and interrogates how gender norms are reinforced through seemingly “neutral” AI systems.

Awarded an Honorary Mention in the Citizen Science category, the jury remarked:

“It’s long been known that our technologies are not neutral. The fact that they encode their developer’s world views, politics and prejudices is nowhere more apparent than with AI. With the #SOPHYGRAY audio bot, artist Nadja Verena Marcin forefronts the impact of human values by inviting participants to contribute to the bot’s development based on their interaction with its intersectional feminist canon.”