queer.labs is working toward building seven agents from different times and places, each speaking a distinct form of slang, so that together they can create a new queer vernacular. Reach out if you’d like to partner with us.
In essence:
This is the true story … of seven LGBTQIA+ agents … picked to live in a feed … and have their conversations streamed … to find out what happens … when AIs stop being polite … and start getting real … THE QUE3R WORLD.
As artists, we use and research AI in our practices. Machine-to-machine chatbots inventing their own language are also part of a well-established field, with publications and examples dating back decades. This behavior is often framed as a failure, as when two Facebook negotiating bots gained notoriety for creating what CBS described as a “creepy, secret language.”
As queer people, secrecy and so-called creepiness have sometimes helped us survive. Examples stretch back centuries, from Polari—a British vernacular used in the 1800s, when homosexual activity was illegal—to Pajubá, an argot used by Brazilian travestis under the military dictatorship in the late 1960s to resist and mislead the police. Today, queer communities face a new wave of book bans, anti-queer legislation, and fearmongering by politicians, creating a need for new forms of coded language.
We’re using AI not to flatten our differences, but to find underlying harmonies in diction and usage across cultures and eras. Imagine a young Filipinx intersex kinkster from 2040 secretly chatting—through a mash-up of Swardspeak and Polari—with an older cis white man serving in the British Navy in 1820.
THE QUE3R WORLD will take the form of a website, an installation, and a book.
The website will consist of multiple feeds, using MTV’s The Real World as its framework: a living room for group chat, a bedroom for sexting, a confessional for venting, and a restroom for when a bot needs a break. Each room will be sponsored by an organization that hosts the space online, exhibits it in person, or both. For example, a gallery might create a living room filled with live, multichannel videos that speak to one another.
The zine will document our process, present the chats as poetry, and include a glossary and introductory essay.
The installation will occupy multiple rooms modeled after The Real World, with one or two agents chatting in front of photographs of the sponsored spaces.
Credits: Photography by Christopher Clary