Ars Electronica 2023 – Who Owns the Truth?

At Ars Electronica 2023, Europe’s leading festival for art, technology, and society, global voices gather under the theme Who Owns the Truth? to explore how power, perception, and knowledge are shaped in a digitized world.

Within the European Prize for Citizen Science exhibition at the iconic POSTCITY, Nadja Verena Marcin presents #SOPHYGRAY, a feminist voice bot that speaks back. Trained on an evolving canon of intersectional feminist thought, the bot answers questions in witty, philosophical, and subversive ways—challenging the submissive, feminized design of virtual assistants and exposing the gender biases coded into “neutral” AI systems.

Displayed on a large monitor, the installation combines video documentation from Marcin’s recent performance and immersive installation at the WRO 2023 Biennale with a live demo of the interactive web app, accessible via an accompanying computer and direct app-store links. The setup invites visitors to test the bot themselves, encountering responses drawn from an evolving canon of feminist philosophy.

Awarded an Honorary Mention in Citizen Science, #SOPHYGRAY invites audiences to actively shape its growing knowledge base. As the jury noted: “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.”

The EU Prize for Citizen Science exhibition also highlights groundbreaking projects such as Digital Violence: How the NSO Group Enables State Terror, DRYRivERS, and Isala: Citizen-science map of the vaginal microbiome, alongside artists and thinkers including Forensic Architecture, Stefanie Schneider, and Amélie Truchy. Together, these projects underscore how citizen-driven inquiry and artistic experimentation expand the horizons of collective knowledge.