science

Jake Elwes

Jake Elwes is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Jake Elwes rather than just read about it. In short: Jake Elwes () is a British media artist, hacker and researcher. Their practice is the exploration of artificial intelligence (AI), queer theory and technical biases.

Key takeaways

Jake Elwes belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Jake Elwes to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Jake Elwes from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jake Elwes () is a British media artist, hacker and researcher. Their practice is the exploration of artificial intelligence (AI), queer theory and technical biases. They are known for using AI to create art in mediums such as video, performance and installation. Elwes considers themselves to be neuroqueer, and their work on queering technology addresses issues caused by the normative biases of artificial intelligence.

Education and early life Elwes was born in London to British contemporary artist and painter Luke Elwes and Anneke, daughter of Hans Dumoulin. Elwes is the great grandchild of Army officer James Hennessy and portrait painter Simon Elwes RA, son of Victorian opera singer Gervase Elwes. Elwes studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 2013 to 2017, where they began using computer code as a medium. In 2016 they attended the School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe in Berlin with artist and educator Gene Kogan. Elwes was introduced to drag performance by their collaborator Dr Joe Parslow who holds a PhD in drag performance. Drag performance has since become instrumental to Elwes' work.

Career

Elwes' work with artificial intelligence is cited as a hopeful strategy to make AI more playful and diverse. Elwes' work has been exhibited in numerous international art museums and galleries and was featured in a BBC documentary on the history of video art, they were a 2021 finalist for the Lumen Prize, and received the Honorary Mention of the 2022 Prix Ars Electronica in the Interactive Art + category. They also curated and presented the opening provocation "The New Real - Artistic and Queer Visions of AI Futures" to the UK government with two drag artists at the AI UK conference 2024. Elwes is part of the Radical Faeries countercultural movement. They have exhibited in museums and galleries across Europe and Asia including:

Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK) - The Zizi Show (2023-2024) for the first digital commission in their photography center's digital gallery Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich, Germany) - Glitch. Die Kunst Der Störung (2023-2024) ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany) - Biomedia (2021-2022) National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Cheongju, South Korea) - What an Artificial World (2024) Somerset House (London, UK) - The Horror Show! (2022-2023) Gazelli Art House (London, UK) - Jake Elwes: Data • Glitch • Utopia (2023) (survey exhibition) Jut Art Museum (Taipei, Taiwan) - Future Lives, Future You (2023-2024) Max Ernst Museum (Brühl, Germany) - Surreal Futures (2023-2024) Zabludowicz Collection (London, UK) - Among the Machines (2022) Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria) - Prix Ars Electronica, CyberArts Exhibition (2022) Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) (London, UK) - Do Androids Dream on Silver Screens? (2023) Arebyte gallery (London, UK) - Real-Time Constraints (2020) Ming Contemporary Art Museum (McaM) (Shanghai, China) - Mind the Deep (2019) HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) (Dortmund, Germany) - House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm (2022) Today Art Museum (Beijing, China) - Future of Today: DEJA VU (2019) Science Gallery (Dublin, Ireland) - BIAS (2021-2022) Yuz Museum (Shanghai, China) - Lying Sophia and Mocking Alexa (2021) Fotomuseum Winterthur The Onassis Foundation (Athens, Greece) - You and AI (2021) Royal College of Art (London, UK) - Event Two (2019) (50th anniversary of Computer Arts Society & Event One) Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin, Germany) - Forschungsfall Nachtigall (2019) Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt, Germany) - I am here to learn (2018) Nature Morte (Delhi, India) - Gradient Descent (2018) BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Newcastle, UK) - Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2017)

Artworks

The Zizi Project - a deepfake drag cabaret

The Zizi Project is a series of works that explore the interaction of drag and A.I. Currently, The Zizi Project is made up of multiple artworks.

Zizi - Queering the Dataset (2019) Knowing that facial recognition technology statically struggle to recognize black women or transgender people, Elwes set out to "Queer the Dataset" through an open-sourced generative adversarial network (GAN, a type of machine learning model and an early generative AI). Elwes added a dataset of 1,000 photos of drag kings and queens into the GAN's 70,000 faces collected in a standardised facial recognition dataset called Flickr-Faces-HQ Dataset (FFHQ). They then created new simulacra faces, known as deep fakes. "We queer that data so it shifts all of the weights in this neural network from a space of normativity into a space of queerness and otherness. Suddenly all of the faces start to break down and you see mascara dissolve into lipstick and blue eye shadow turn into a pink wig" said Elwes in a 2023 interview for Artnet.

Zizi & Me (2020–2023) Zizi & Me is an ongoing multimedia collaboration between drag queen Me The Drag Queen and a deepfake A.I. clone of Me The Drag Queen. Using neural networks trained on filmed footage, the project creates a virtual body that can mimic reference movements. The first act, which features a digital lip-sync duet to Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better), satirises the idea of A.I. being mistaken for a human, using drag performance and cabaret to critique societal narratives about A.I. and its role in shaping identity. The project is part of The Zizi Project by Jake Elwes, which explores the intersection of drag performance and A.I.

The Zizi Show - A Deepfake Drag Cabaret (2020) The Zizi Show is a deep fake drag act based on artificial intelligence (AI). It has been presented live and as interactive online artwork. It is an exploration of queer culture and the algorithms philosophy and ethics of AI. The Zizi Show was exhibited as the inaugural exhibition in the digital gallery at the V&A’s Photography Center from 2023 to 2024.

Zizi in Motion: A Deepfake Drag Utopia (Movement by Wet Mess) (2023) "Zizi in Motion" is a multichannel silent video installation featuring AI-generated deepfake performances, which are dynamically re-animated through the movements of London drag artist Wet Mess. The movements of Wet Mess cause the AI-generated visuals to glitch and distort, showcasing the interaction between drag performance and artificial intelligence. The work explore the potential for queer communities to ethically and creatively reclaim and repurpose deepfake technology, using it to celebrate queer bodies and identities.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jake Elwes

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jake Elwes claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jake Elwes before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jake Elwes ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jake Elwes

In research: Jake Elwes appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Jake Elwes in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Jake Elwes is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1993 births, 21st-century British artists, AI art, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jake Elwes outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Jake Elwes in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jake Elwes means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Jake Elwes out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jake Elwes in simple terms?

Jake Elwes () is a British media artist, hacker and researcher. Their practice is the exploration of artificial intelligence (AI), queer theory and technical biases.

Why does Jake Elwes matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jake Elwes?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jake Elwes.