Cocky Objects (2024)

This installation explores how machine learning systems transfer information across different media, revealing biases embedded in their classification processes. Drawing on Cockney rhyming slang - a language formed and developed to deliberately confuse outsiders and the authorities - the project uses miscommunication as both method and message.

12 3d-printed objects were created by using computer-generated imagery from cockney rhyming slang, then translating into models through AI into 3d models. This multi-layered process exploits the computer’s inability to grasp cultural nuance, exposing the distortions that occur when human language meets algorithmic logic. The work draws a line between working-class efforts to evade power structures and the current issues of algorithmic bias, surveillance and commodification of language in capitalistic societies.

The project aims to illustrate the limitations and failures of AI classification systems when confronted with the complexity of human expression. It invites viewers to question how meaning is constructed, lost and reshaped when filtered through technologies designed to categorise.