ghosts of automation

Silver metallic background with words that form a spiral and read, "though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather by a cyborg than a goddess". The text has an embossed effect on the metal background.

Created as companion pieces to their MA research project at the University of Toronto’s Women and Gender Studies Institute, Yule’s Ghosts of Automation build upon their larger research question: who are the humans behind technology’s myth of automation? What labour is made opaque and invisibilized to uphold narratives of tech as a great equalizing force? What does it mean to be a cyborg and who is granted the agency to identify with such a figure as a site of liberation?

What ghosts continue to haunt the machine?

Blue background. Digital poster design of three human-like figures in black silhouttes and the word "wetware" in black text moving vertically up the left side of the image.
Red background. Digital poster design of three human-like figures in black silhouttes and the word "wetware" in black text moving vertically up the left side of the image.
Yellow background. Digital poster design of three human-like figures in black silhouttes and the word "wetware" in black text moving vertically up the left side of the image.

Nakamura aptly writes in her piece that “some must labor invisibly for others of us to feel, if not actually be, free and empowered through technology use […] it is the flexible labor of women of color, either outsourced or insourced, that made and continue to make this possible.” The languaging around AI within and beyond the global North technology sector right now does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a long haunting built on the backs of women—particularly Black and Indigenous women and women of colour—who have been made the carry the weight of upholding technology’s killer story for the spear-wielding Hero whose sole interest remains the manufacturing, deployment, and end-user adoption of new technology.

Silver metallic background with the Virgin Mary and words that read, "let me rather lose all things". The text and image has an embossed effect on the metal background.
Green background. Digital poster design of three human-like figures in black silhouttes and the word "wetware" in black text moving vertically up the left side of the image.

The futures we are being promised in this era of AI are profoundly haunted. They are haunted mythologies and killer stories of technology’s capacious possibilities, histories of futures that never came to pass, and vast networks of invisibilized labourers who have carried the burden of upholding these myths—a long tradition of ghost workers. As Derrida writes, “one can never distinguish between the future-to-come and the coming-back of a specter.”

A pixelated graphic of a person on a blue background. They are wearing headphones and holding a red apple. The word "some cyborgs" are in distorted, curvy text on either side of their head.
A pixelated graphic of a person on a lime green background. They are wearing headphones and holding a red apple. The word "dream of eden" are in distorted, curvy text on either side of their head.

more from the portfolio ☺︎

An orange box on a gray ledge. The box has a dark red hand-drawn icon of a tea cup on the front and the words "sweet orange" on the top.
Open magazine with two pages visible. The left page has a teal background with white and red handwritten-style text and a cityscape illustration at the bottom. The right page contains black text on a white background, with some decorative elements.
Two red books titled 'You're on Mute' with a black and white image of an open mouth and teeth on the cover.

You’re On Mute

On the Danforth

Sweet Orange