Kawita Vatanajyankur 
Born 1987 Bangkok, Thailand 
Lives and works in Bangkok 

Pat Pataranutaporn
Born 1995, Boston, United States 
Lives and works in Boston

The Machine Ghost in the Human Shell (from ‘Cyber Labour’ series) 2024
Performative hologram projections with AI
Commissioned for APT11. Courtesy: The artist

The machine ghost in the human shell 2024 is the third work in Kawita Vatanajyankur’s ‘Cyber labour’ series, made in collaboration with AI researcher Pat Pataranutaporn. As a series, these diverse works address changing attitudes towards the emergence and visibility of Artificial Intelligence. As Vatanajyankur and Pataranutaporn convey, platforms like Chat GPT have shown that AI is capable of the creative thinking once considered the exclusive domain of humans. 

Addressing the looming implications of this developing technology, The Machine ghost in the human shell enacts a battle between Vatanjyankur and a holographic ‘ghost’ (representing human and machine). With her entire body connected to electronic stimulus machines (EMS) in a specially fabricated garment, she attempts to mentally resist and act against the machine’s control. In an accompanying audio component, she and the machine ghost enact a choreographed dialogue that proposes alternative scenarios regarding AI and the future of the human race. Will intelligent machines replace humans, with humans become the physical robots fit only to work on menial tasks? Or will an evolution occur in which natural and artificial, human and machine connect in a new reality?