Studio 207 · 20 - 23 November, 10:00am–6:00pm
The Cabinet of Cognition is an AI-generated short film tracing the evolution of cognitive labor—from the 18th-century Mechanical Turk to today’s global gig economy. Using AI-generated narration and visuals, the film explores the hidden cognitive labor of the unseen workers, often called the “invisible workforce of AI,” through a Borges’ style narrative. By blurring fiction and reality, it challenges who truly “thinks” in the age of AI, and what it means to be a worker in a system that hides its human cost.
The narrative was co-written with the open-source Qwen3 30B Large Language Model conditioned to produce text in the style of Jorge Luis Borges. The narration audio was generated using VibeVoice-Large Q8 and zero-shot voice cloning of a public domain audio recording of an interview with Borges. The video was generated using various open-source diffusion models, including Flux 1D, Wan 2.1, and open source LoRAs. The background music was generated using the open source Stable Audio 1.0.
Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki are media artists who critique the dominant technological powers by hacking technologies to reveal underlying assumptions and its e>ects. We use methods from media theory and science and technology studies as a means for critical engagement. We often reproduce technologies used for social control or that have a significant social impact, including open-source surveillance systems, financial technologies, and artificial intelligence.
Curry and Gradecki are Associate Professors in Art + Design at Northeastern University. They hold MFAs from UCLA (New Genres 2010) and PhDs from SUNY Bu>alo in Media Study (Curry 2018) and Visual Studies (Gradecki 2019). They have presented and exhibited at venues including Ars Electronica (Linz), Arts Santa Mónica (Barcelona), FramerFramed (Amsterdam), NeMe (Cyprus), and Beta Festival (Dublin).
Their research has been published in Leonardo, Big Data & Society, Artnodes, Visual Resources, and Leuven University Press. They were awarded Best Artist(s) in the ‘Artists for Media’ track for MediaFutures transnational support program in 2023. Their artwork has been funded by Science Gallery (Dublin, Detroit, Atlanta, Melbourne), the NEoN Digital Arts Festival, and MediaFutures.