LINDA DOUNIA REBEIZ


Linda Dounia Rebeiz is an artist and designer who investigates the philosophical and environmental implications of technocapitalism. She is inspired by science fiction, speculative design, solarpunk, and degrowth. 

Her work mediates her memories as alternative truths and evidence of excluded ways of being and doing. It is formed through the dialogue (and tensions) between analogue and digital mediums. 

In 2023, Linda was recognized on the TIMEAI100 list of most influential people in AI for her work on speculative archiving – building AI models that help us remember what we have lost. 



SPANNUNGSBOBEN

Machine Hallucinations
(2021)


Spannungsbogen is a series of AI generated animations which are outputs of a GAN trained with acrylic paintings. The project reflects on issues of discrimination in facial recognition technology and the lack of representation of non western artworks in GAN generated art. It’s the first large scale GAN release by a black/African/woman.
For this series, I hand painted 2,000 acrylic vignettes in an abstract style inspired the Fremen of Frank Herbert’s Dune. I then trained a GAN model with these paintings to output 10,000 new paintings that were then arranged following an indexing system that considers form, colour, and texture. Finally, I curated these outputs to feed into the creation of 80 animations of 1 minute each and 400 still images.

In Herbert’s words, spannungsbogen is ‘the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing’. This series simulates a conversation between me and a machine, a dialectical search for meaning between a thinking mind and a feeling one, and an ode to the invisible creatures in the cracks and crevasses of the world, patiently lying in wait for their turn to freely exist.

This body of work was commissioned by Quantum and displayed in their Los Angeles gallery. 











2024, DAKAR, SENEGAL