CYCLE-LOGICAL: IVONA TAU

Artist AND computer scientist Ivona Tau PLAYS WITH CODE AND temporality in her latest project Bi(t)ological Clock.

By Kimuli Eriya

Ivona Tau is all too au fait with duality. Her formative years in Vilnius, Lithuania, and later Warsaw, Poland to study mathematics, were marked by a distinct polarity: She straddled the space between two urban sprawls—one post-Soviet culture and one Western capitalist. With a PhD in AI from the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology and a passion for photography, she likewise had to find a way to balance the worlds of art and STEM, seeking out innovation in the intersections of disparate things.

At 18, Ivona gave her grandfather’s analog camera a go, and found she had a knack for it. The format lent itself to experimentation and she began to play with images’ texture and color—fledgling steps toward abstraction and surrealism. Soon, Ivona was negotiating realities, making compromises between the numerical and visual as her practices merged. That’s what makes her work unquestionably her own: It fuses Ivona’s personal history, with the impersonal rigidity technology.

To Ivona, AI is more than a potential artistic method; it’s a way of seeing, an avenue toward the manipulation of neural networks and code. She could use it to deconstruct images at whim—a direct evolution from her work as a teenager. Citing visionaries like David Lynch and Dora Maar as sources of inspiration, Ivona’s aesthetic langauge is informed by futurism and cyber-punk culture. Her latest project Bi(t)ological Clock illustrates the nature of all kinds of cycles, from biological to technological to economic. For instance, she lays bare the parallels between menstruation and bitcoin so plainly you can’t help but wonder how you’ve missed them.

One doesn’t merely look at Ivona’s photographs; you interact with them.For someone with so many strings to her bow, she marries the ephemeral, hard data, and imagination with the precision of an old master

KIMULI ERIYA: Ivona, how did you conceptualize your new project Bi(t)ological Clock?

IVONA TAU: It was my first project using Bitcoin. I wanted to link technological, organic, and biological cycles. My first question was, How do I create a biological clock on a blockchain? It’s related to female reproductive health, but I wanted to think about it in terms of humans having an internal clock. When we design technologically rigid systems, we don’t think about them being in sync with our bodies. We think that tech never dies, but funnily enough, that’s not true. It’s more ephemeral than it may seem. The more you use the internet, the more you realize that social media platforms can disappear in an instant. Technology and the economy surprisingly mimic biological entities.

KE: Could you talk me through the process of training your Stable Diffusion models?

IT: I train my own AI models to give myself more control, using various data sets: my photography, my archives, and non-image data. I use this technology as a lens into my memories. When illustrating time, I was interested in the breakdown and rebirth of an image. I began with glitchy images; I’ve always been fascinated by them, because they’re purely form, not content.

I reviewed old data sets, looking for experiments with form. Most were film photographs taken with my Lomo LC-A camera. I collected around 200 and trained a Stable Diffusion model. Stable Diffusion imitates the style of the images it’s shown, so these models tried to replicate my images—often failing, but grasping their essence. I’m interested in casting a machine gaze onto my worldview.

KE: What about developing the aesthetic aspects?

IT: I wanted a glitchy, minimalist aesthetic. When thinking about the female body, I didn’t want too many identifiable details, even though they’re tied to specific women and events. I wanted a more generalized version of things that could happen to anyone. Another inspiration was blockchain and technology—a raw, neon aesthetic. The procedural codes to add numbers and destroy images came from the [idea of a] broken TV. I saw an artist do a show with a broken TV and smartphone screens—it was beautiful, glitchy, raw.

KE: What drew you to AI as a medium?

IT: Between 2010 and 2014, computer vision emerged, and I was captivated by the idea of making computers understand images. It felt like magic. Back then, convolutional neural networks were a breakthrough, allowing computers to identify objects in photos. Naturally, the next step was using computers to create.

KE: Cycles are a key theme to this project—human, economic, technological. Why did those parallels feel important or relevant to you?

IT: They emerged as a way of thinking about time. Western cultures often view time as a linear narrative of progress. Eastern cultures think about time in cycles, slower recharging and growth. I realized we have cycles everywhere.

KE: How do dynamic tokens come into play, in terms of reflecting the nature of those cycles?

IT: I programmed four cycle parts tied to four versions of each work. Every seven days, they change to the next phase. Time is measured in blockchain blocks, which renew approximately every 10 minutes. There’s a natural discrepancy. The tokens return to their starting point every four weeks. There’s a phase of growth, decay, chaos, and rebirth. Each of the works has a pre-programmed end date—a metaphor for [death]. The pieces will stop changing at their defined moment and remain in chaos forever.

KE: In regards to time and memory, are there other themes you were working with that might be under the surface?

IT: This project is about historical memory—sometimes fading, sometimes decaying. The memory of the internet, of technology. It’s about preservation, collective memory, and my personal memory.

KE: You mentioned that the pieces are tied to historical events. Could you tell me more about that?

IT: Being a woman in science, photography, and machine learning, you’re often in the minority. I’ve followed many female scientists and noticed that, whenever they made important discoveries, there was controversy. Katy Bowman, who worked on that black hole photo, faced backlash. Timnit Gebru from Google, who worked on AI bias and ethics, also faced repercussions. There are many cases where one person gets credit for a team effort. I wanted to highlight these controversies. I linked each work to a specific event from the past 20 years, related to female scientists, inscribing them onto Bitcoin blocks from the time they occurred. We live in continuity and history repeats itself, so awareness is important.

KE: How does your gender impact your approach to science and technology?

IT: As a woman in these fields, you have to be much more confident. You have to be much louder. We tend to be on the quieter side of the spectrum; we wait for people to notice us. Facing those stereotypes is a way to make a mark. In some ways, an awareness of those obstacles helps us navigate them.

KE: Circling back to the project, you took inspiration from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Perfect Lovers—how’d you come across that work and where does it show up in Bi(t)ological Clock?

IT: I think it’s one of the most romantic pieces ever. I came across it when I went through MoMA’s archives. Two clocks start at the same time, but as the battery dies, they go out of sync. It's important to understand the tension between our bodies and technology; Felix’s piece highlights the temporal nature of life through these clocks, simple things that we have in our everyday lives. Now, AI and the blockchain [infiltrate] our everyday. It’s an invisible technology, but I think we’ll get used to it, like we did with the internet.

KE: How do you strike a balance between the quantitative and the qualitative?

IT: I used to think they were unrelated. Part of my life was very analytical, focused on maths and computer science, but the other part was artistic. When I was little, I used to paint because my dad was a painter. I’m bilingual, so I’m used to dualities. At home, I got used to working, living, and being in many different dualities.

Seven years ago, when I started taking my fine art practice seriously, combining photography with technology, I [realized I] was able to tell stronger stories. It felt like an intersection where I could finally project my voice. Now, there are so many intersections—even in technology, you must use your imagination. It’s not far from the art world. Some people are artists, some people are scientists, [but they aren’t] on opposite ends of the spectrum. It doesn't have to be that way.

KE: Do you think you'll continue working with AI? How do you think we should approach it going forward?

IT: I’ll go where the technology goes. I’m fascinated by all the new developments. I’m trying to test them myself, thinking about how I could incorporate them creatively. I’m not tied to AI—maybe there will be a new kind of technology in the next decade. What I will continue to do is explore the relationship between society, science, and technology, using myself as a medium.

Some of the hype around AI may fade when people [understand] its shortcomings. A lot of my work is about demystifying AI. I mean, it’s interesting to think about the future and be prepared for dystopian scenarios. At the same time, we tend to forget [that the] looming danger of technology is, of course, humans misusing it—creating deepfakes and fake news. There is a proliferation of a lack of trust. Yes, we have to deal with these issues. But not by being afraid of AI.