GAIAi: Artificial Infantilism and the Prompt Poetry of Unblocking all Keywords

Focusing on the concept of General Audience Iterations Artificial Infantilism (GAIAi), Ian Haig and Adam Zaretsky will examine how contemporary AI systems are shaped by content moderation, platform governance, and cultural expectations around safety and accessibility.

Censorship and AI, obsolete models, using AI the wrong way, ugly AI and the interior body as an antidote to the idealised perfection of exterior bodies on Instagram. AI as haunted images culled from the collective unconscious, images that don’t belong and are not of this world. AI slop as abject contamination, algorithmic parasites, transhumanism gone bad and AI as noise and error in the system of the AI overlords of Palantir and the emerging AI control grid for the Useless eater class. AI as an occult technology invoking  the residue of culture, the leftovers and the dead.

Featuring Ian Haig and Adam Zaretsky, the discussion will explore how these forces influence both the production and reception of AI-generated media. The speakers will address how algorithmic filtering, blocked keywords, and platform policies shape aesthetic outcomes and public discourse. At the same time, they are considering the unexpected visual forms emerging from AI systems—ranging from polished synthetic imagery to distorted or unsettling outputs that challenge established aesthetic norms.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Ian Haig is a multidisciplinary artist working across video, sculpture, drawing, installation, technology‑based media, and mutant AI. His practice challenges the idea that low or base cultural forms lack value, and has long focused on visceral, body‑centred themes. Over the past thirty years, his work has examined the intersections of contemporary media, technology, and the human body, addressing attraction and repulsion, fanaticism, transhumanism, and the degenerative effects of pervasive technologies. Haig has exhibited internationally at major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), ACMI, GOMA Brisbane, and Artec Biennale (Nagoya). His video work has screened at over 200 festivals worldwide. He is also an experienced curator, notably of Unco and Very Unco, at the Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles.

Adam Zaretsky, Ph.D., is an experimental bioartist and former researcher in MIT’s Department of Biology. His work critically examines the legal, ethical, social, and libidinal dimensions of biotechnology, with a particular focus on transgenic humans. Known for his hands‑on bioart laboratories, Zaretsky creates participatory spaces for experimental bioart production and discourse. He has taught internationally at institutions including San Francisco State University, SymbioticA (University of Western Australia), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Leiden University, and the Waag Society. Since 2016, he has served as Head of Research at Nadlinc, and since 2022 as a Research Consultant at BEAK in New York. Since 2024, he is a Visiting Professor at Ionian University, Creative Director of TTTlabs and TTTfellows, and part of the EU‑funded Rewilding Cultures project.