Sarah Sweeney is a digital artist who explores photography and other documentary media through the lens of digital manipulation. Her work raises questions about the media objects we use to preserve our lives. She works across a range of media, including photographic composites, iPhone apps, photographic sculptures, augmented reality, stereoscopy, animation, video, and Instagram feeds. In each piece, she weaves small bits of recorded material into larger objects that are simultaneously real and imagined. She is an Associate Professor at Skidmore College and received her BA from Williams College and her MFA from Columbia University.
“My Deepfake Dad is a series of conversations produced through interactions with an audio deepfake of my father, who died twenty-eight years ago. These conversations will explore death, our relationship, and his struggle with being a writer and a father. I will construct my father’s side of these conversations through visits to mediums and spiritualists, empty chair therapy sessions, interactions with AI text generators, found footage, and conversations with my family. My Deepfake Dad makes reanimation of a person possible and forces us to reckon with our feelings about consent and the ownership of our digital bodies.”