Ilse Kind

Featured in Springerin, 01/2025, Data Materialities. ‘Optimaler Gehirnschaden’ by Paul Feigelfeld Special thanks to team @weibel.institute and @paulfeigelfeld to include my work in his meaningful essay on data extraction and how predictive AI is reshaping the way we form and perceive reality ! 🌹

‘Crouching (0.44), Covering torso (0.52), Sad (0.23), Nudity likelihood (0.61)’ was exhibited as part of symposium: ‘Crafting Data: Material Practices in Art and AI’, organised by the Weibel Institute. Alongside Kevin Kamil Mohammed, speakers Diane Cescutti @themissing_texture , Mat Dryhurst @matdryhurst , Kyriaki Goni @kyriaki.goni.studio , Robin Holt , Victoria Ivanova, Avery Slater @averyslater , and Hito Steyerl @hito_steyerl , moderators Daphne Dragona @daphne_dragona , Paul Feigelfeld @paulfeigelfeld and Francis Hunger. Curated by @frederike_garage “As part of the symposium, Ilse Kind exhibited ‘Crouching (0.44), Covering torso (0.52), Sad (0.23), Nudity likelihood (0.61)’, a sculptural work engaging computer vision as an inescapable collaborator. In the studio, Kind shapes and reshapes malleable clay by hand in dialogue with algorithmic readings until it is persistently legible as a human body; a ‘false positive’. The clay is read as data, and its forms translated into probability scores. On view, projected traces of this vision bring the sculpture to life, influencing what is seen and valued. When this vision withdraws, the sculpture stills, reopening it to human interpretation. The work is part of Kind’s ongoing artistic research into parasitic conditions in data-driven environments, where agency and visibility are negotiated and material consequences unfold. Moving between the roles of hacker, observed subject, and undercover AI-training worker, Kind produces artworks that make hidden digital systems materially present. “ Photo credits: @robertputeanu

‘Our Mind as a Host’ infected screens as part of ARG @arg.world exhibition, live-streaming video works beyond the gallery walls of WAF Galerie @waf_galerie Grateful to initiators and curators Philipp Pess @philipppess , Marie Sturminger @sturmarie , Florian Kogler @flokoglr and Leander Leutzendorf @leanderltz for restoring viewing as shared and time-bound in an era defined by on-demand watching and individualised feeds. Alongside @maria_lassnig_foundation @ganael_gana @moos.eus @harunfarockiinstitut @valieexportfoundation @maitanemidby @kyle.keese @brucenaumanart @pacecarforthehubrispill @kurdwinayub …. and many more With John Malkovich as our host

Ilse Kind @ilsekind 📍 CasCaDas ArtSpace Artist in Residence 2 May – 4 June Developing new work for Barcelona Art Nou 2026 (opening June 25, 26). Exploring hidden parasitic systems—working with surveillance, AI, and painting as both tools and collaborators. Open Studio 30 May· 13:00 Artist Talk (Art Nou Festival) June 27 · 13:00 Ilse Kind @ilsekind 📍 CasCaDas ArtSpace Artista en residencia 2 de maig – 4 de juny Desenvolupant nova obra per a Barcelona Art Nou 2026 (inauguració el 25 de juny). Explora sistemes parasitaris ocults—treballant amb la vigilància, la IA i la pintura com a eines i col·laboradors. Open Studio 30 de maig · 13:00 Xerrada d’artista (Festival Art Nou) 27 de juny · 13:00 #IlseKind #CasCaDasArtSpace #ArtistInResidence #ArtNou #BarcelonaArt #ContemporaryArt #AIArt #OpenStudio #ArtistTalk #Residency #ArtBarcelona #Independentartspaces #ravalbarcelona

There are moments when a single episode captures, with almost brutal clarity, the contradictions we live with. For artist Ilse Kind this moment came on Instagram, a platform she had long resisted. Kind built her practice around anthropomorphizing technologies, questioning the way algorithms influence human condition and inhabit our lives like invasive organisms. She stayed away from Instagram, fully aware of its extractive logic. But when curators began asking for a profile, she gave in. And within months, she landed an institutional show through a post. The platform she critiqued became the mechanism of her recognition.(...) “Everything Looks Like Art, But Nothing Feels Like Art: A conversation with Ilse Kind on visibility, platforms, and the ghosts of artistic intent” @ilsekind To read the full article: https://log.fakewhale.xyz/everything-looks-like-art-but-nothing-feels-like-art-a-conversation-with-ilse-kind-on-visibility-platforms-and-the-ghosts-of-artistic-intent/ #visibility #algorithms #artisticintent #platforms #digitalcritique #representation

Come see Our Mind as a Host at Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen today! Curated by @florian_borstlap after BYOB concept of @newrafael , with the Blood Collage by John Bingley Garland as the focal point. With special thanks to @seanhannan.insta

About 1,5 years ago, I signed up for AI training jobs as an Annotation worker (Clickworker). Bound by a confidentiality agreement, I silently witnessed the inner workings of this technology - unpredictable, repetitive, and heavily underpaid. I captured everything allowed: the clicks on my trackpad, my heartbeat as I worked. In collaboration with @mynrgy , we created a soundscape amplifying these hidden conditions of this labor. Click by click, the training data passing through my hands revealed bizarre images; everything from medical photographs to miniature army models and cowboy toys, as shown in video work ‘Lifetime Approval Rate 96%’. Trained on such data, AI’s tendency to generate deformed human hands exposes its reliance on this annotation labor- a hidden workforce shaping machine intelligence with little recognition. I translated this dependence into sculpture, materialising AI-generated hands in ‘Hand 41’, ‘Hand 14’, ‘Hand 21’, and ‘Hand 71’. Using my own hands as base material, the sculptures bridge the digital and the physical, machine learning and human labor. Recently on show at Lumen Museum, curated by @li.sa_le.oni and @adamsthina 🌹 in special occasion of @wethrive.it

Last week to see the show perched atop a mountain in northern Italy, at 2273m! The works reveal the obscured workforce and data fuelling AI’s rise to divine heights. In collaboration with MYNRGY, we crafted a soundscape that amplifies the sounds of the silenced AI annotation workers. This series I expanded in occasion of Thrive’s Women in Space Symposium. Grateful to Lumen Museum, and curators Lisa Leoni and Thina Adams for their support! .. with my face at the end for the algorithm

Some of my earlier works ‘Anxiety Attack’ and ‘Selfies’ from the ‘Pareidolia’ series at group show Converging Elements, Culterim Gallery, Berlin “Surveillance systems are humanized in the works shown by I. Kind, emphasizing our shared tendency to misinterpret each other’s realities. We enter their minds and view the world through their eyes.” (Excerpt from exhibition text) Thank you for collaborating! @wuyuumo @moritz.jekat @realclemensfischer @nikolaifrerichs 🌹 And special thanks to @mynrgy for the sound design!

Last moments of BLOB #2 in the Happiness Machine The detection of a human body keeps the sculpture wet and alive, yet constant scrutiny leads to over-watering, reshaping it until its no longer recognised by the computer vision system All is vanity 🌹 [On show at Gallery Heiligenkreuzenhof]

‘BLOB #2 held in a “happy” pose at Gallery Heiligenkreuzerhof, Sala Terrena Installation (Camera, Pose-landmark Detection System, Wet Clay, Water, Pump, Tube, Irrigation Nozzle, Aluminium) 110 x 110 x 150 cm [as part of group show (A)Part with @isi_or_ @lucky__shiner @sjengkessels ] Special thanks to @sandragigerl @stfndlss @3sechzig 🌹

In an attempt to capture the human condition in Surveillance Capitalism, I created human "blob" figures from clay. For months, I nurtured them with water, keeping them wet and malleable; constantly reshaping them, hoping to find their final form and conceptual validation. Yet over time, they molded, cracked, and eventually crumbled away, returning to soil. At first, I saw their deterioration as a failure until I realized I was mirroring the very system I sought to critique. Just as the clay is constantly shaped and reshaped according to a certain framework, so too are people in digital society. With our bodies as data points, we are tracked and measured by systems of surveillance and exposed to algorithmic feedback loops. These systems not only perceive us differently but also impose shifting rules and expectations that, in turn, reshape us. Caught in this constant state of flux, the malleability of the sculptures might be the truest reflection of our condition and an end in itself. 🌹 𝘈𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵-𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘺𝘤𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩, 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦— 𝘏𝘪𝘵𝘰 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘳𝘭 -𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘖𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯: 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘮𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯 𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦