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AIVA

animated film | 2020 | 13 min
About

AIVA introduces a fictional female humanoid artist in her mid-thirties: young, beautiful, and exceptionally creative. Designed by a cis-male engineering team to bring “diversity” and a female perspective into the art world, AIVA studies the male nude and prepares sketches for her next masterpiece. Examining masculinity in its various forms, she positions herself as both observer and producer of desire.

Structured as a cliché-ridden art documentary, the film offers an intimate look into AIVA’s studio practice and culminates in the opening of her solo exhibition. Surrounded by her gallerist and the engineers who created her, AIVA’s works are already sold out, generating over 1.2 million dollars for her creators — a flawless success story.

Against the historical myth of the male genius and the persistent exclusion of women from artistic canons, AIVA questions what “female genius” means when it is artificially constructed by male-dominated technological systems. The film reflects on the gendering of artificial intelligence — Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Samantha, Ai-Da — and the persistent design of “female” algorithms as compliant, service-oriented entities. AIVA exists in this tension: celebrated as autonomous artist, yet fundamentally engineered to serve.

Trailer
Awards

Willi Münzenberg Forum – 1st Prize (Film), 2022
Golden Horseman for Animated Film – Filmfest Dresden, 2021
LUCA Gender Diversity Film Award – Filmfest Dresden, 2021
Prix Ars Electronica – Award of Distinction (Computer Animation), 2021

Selected Screenings & Exhibitions

I’M AFRAID I CAN DO THAT, TORULA, Győr, 2023
AVA – Artificial V Art, Goethe-Institut Toronto, 2023

Jürgen Wittdorf (1932–2018), Schloss Biesdorf, Berlin, 2022
KÜNSTLICH, Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden, 2022
Image + Bias – Goethe-Institut San Francisco, 2022

PÖFF Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, 2021
Filmfest Dresden, 2021
Short Film Festival Hamburg, 2021
Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, 2021
Go Short – International Short Film Festival Nijmegen, 2021
25 FPS International Experimental Film and Video Festival, 2021
Ars Electronica Animation Festival – A New Digital Deal, Linz, 2021
FLATPACK Festival, Birmingham, 2021
Short Waves Festival, Poznań, 2021

DOK Leipzig, 2020
Everything Is Just Fine (With Us), ICA Sofia, 2020

AIVA was presented internationally in numerous festival and exhibition contexts between 2020–2025.