The Specimen Project

Year: 
2025
Ranking: 
Entrant
Artist: 
Alexis Childress (Graduate Student)
Department: 
Art
Lab: 
Cheadle Research Center

Description

The Specimen Project blends science with digital art to create futuristic fossils that explore identity in technology. It challenges how AI sees us, asking if visual data can shift how algorithms shape our stories. This project aims to reimagine the future through experimentation and digital creation.

Through digital collage and otherworldly juxtapositions, my work is an investigation of identity, systems and Afrofuturism. Within the back rooms of my own Black feminism, I incorporate my own visual language to create futuristic fossils that preserve and transmit the richness of Black stories. Inspired by research methodology and specimen archiving, I created a dataset of digital specimens. These specimens, made up of found objects and original creations, serve as visual markers, reframing personal narratives within a structured, yet fluid, archival framework. This evolving archive serves as a poetic record, reclaiming Black identity within the scientific system, while creating an open source cultural dataset that will inform algorithms and AI-driven archives.
 

CSEPSchuller LabCNSIUCSBMOXI