SADAF SADRI Selected Work
Sadaf Sadri makes work that explores worldbuilding that prompts reflection on gender, ideology, power, and relationality using digital technologies.
In this exploration, they are inspired by Islamic institutions of patterns, Shia iconography, and occult sciences. Sadaf is particularly interested in how art can imagine new modes of collectivity within virtual spaces and the decentralized web. They are currently a Ph.D. student at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media at the University of Washington. In 2022, they founded the SPAM New Media Festival, a platform for experimental practices in art and technology in Seattle, where they currently reside.
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Work
- De/Angular
- A Prayer Unfolds Itself Into
- Threads
- Listening Patterns
- It Happened On A Sunday
- Heavens by ML
- Cow
- Nocturnal Baseline
Heavens by ML
Heavens by ML, 2022
Video, LLM
This work examines belief systems as self-reinforcing structures that organize morality, behavior, and authority. Once established, these systems often operate as closed logics, experienced as external forces rather than human constructions.
Heavens by ML focuses on religion as one such structure, particularly in its entanglement with political power. The work does not address faith as a linguistic and operational system that is deployed to legitimize violence and control.
The project was produced by training a GPT-2 model on a dataset compiled from the Quran, the Bible, and the Torah. The model was then prompted with a question concerning paradise. Its responses were edited into verse and used as the textual foundation of the video. By outsourcing authorship to a machine trained on sacred language, Heavens by ML attempts to foreground the automation of meaning and the instability of authority.