Inmi Lee is an artist, educator, and a programmer whose work explores current sociopolitical systems and the structure of power that exists within the interaction of people. Inmi's work has been exhibited internationally, including ACM Siggraph, ISEA, FutureFest, Seoul Digital Art Biennale, Boston Cyberarts Festival, Anren Biennale, Madrid Abierto among many others. Currently, she is an Associate Arts Professor of Interactive Media Arts (IMA) at NYU Shanghai.

11.26 Real and the Authentic

Due to scientific and technological advancement, recent political and artistic concern is focused on the discourse of the truth and the fake. With the current American presidency, the American administration's public image seems to be situated between truth and lies. Fiction-in-the-real has become the characteristic mode of political humor for our time. Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy in Saturday Night Live are typical fare. This type of political parody has become more pervasive in the past decade.

When we analyze the arts (except for virtual reality and artificial intelligence) we find a significant tendency toward borrowing the real and turning it into the fake: fake documentaries, imagined historic archives, plausible advertisements, hacked museum audio tours, and invented critics. Art of the fake often has a political agenda, carried forward along the lines of the French proverb prêcher le faux pour savoir le vrai ("tell a lie to get at the truth"). Some of these works subtly alter the view of the real, but in truthful ways by their untruth. How should we perceive and interpret this blurred border between the truth and the fake?