QT.bot

QT.bot is an artificial intel­li­gence, trained on the textual and visual data of the community mapping platform Queering the Map, that generates speculative queer and trans futures and the envi­ron­ments in which they occur. Their digital mind is constructed from an imple­men­ta­tion of the Open AI GPT‑2 text generation model trained on over 82 000 text entries from the platform, and a StyleGAN trained on scraped Google Street View imagery of the tagged coordinates on Queering the Map.

The narratives and landscapes of speculative LGBTQ2IA+ life generated by QT.bot straddle the line between the plausible and the fantastic, revelling in the potential of failure, chaos, and incom­men­su­ra­bil­i­ty in the queer use of machine learning tech­nolo­gies. The experience of viewing the machinic narratives and envi­ron­ments of LGBTQ2IA+ life that QT.bot propagates is one of dis­ori­en­ta­tion — time, space, and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty collapse, producing mul­ti­plic­i­tous visions of the many futures contained within the data. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the voices of their human community, QT.bot fabulates on the absences of the archive, orienting us away from what is, and towards what could be. 

QT.bot by Lucas LaRochelle is presented as a series of large-scale posters in the public space of Esch-sur-Alzette, as part of CYBER STRUCTURES: Material Realities – Digital Experiences, the inaugural programme of Elektron.

Curators: Vincent Crapon & Françoise Poos
With the generous support of the Œuvre Nationale de Secours Grande-Duchesse Charlotte
In the framework of the Biennale 2024 Archi­tec­tures — Esch Capitale Culturelle