Swiss Confederation Logo
Tobias Gutmann

Tobias Gutmann

Face-o-mat Sai Bot

Nome(i)

Tobias Gutmann (1987)

Instagram

tobiasgutmann

Impiego

100%

Formazione

Master, Fine Arts, ZHdK, Zurich, 2020;
Master, Fine Arts in Storytelling, Konstfack, Stockholm (SE), 2014;
Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communication, HKB, Bern, 2011

Titolo

Face-o-mat Sai Bot

Anno di creazione

2019–2022

Luogo di creazione

Zurich

Contesto di creazione

Face-o-mat Sai Bot was developed in collaboration with Dazlus. Face-o-mat Sai Bot is supported in 2022 by the ZHdK Z-Kubator.

Collaboratore(i)

Dazlus (AI development of Sai Bot)

Oggetto(i) mostrato(i)

Face-o-mat Sai Bot installation: on a table with a chair. Face-o-mat Sai Bot collection: 8 portraits by Sai Bot, 2022, framed fine art print, 110 × 80 cm

Dimensioni

Face-o-mat Sai Bot: 60 × 30 × 15 cm;
table: 90 × 120 cm;
cardboard chair: 60 × 30 × 30 cm
8 pictures, each 110 × 80 cm, framed

Formati / Durata

The Face-o-mat Sai Bot performance lasts around 5 minutes per person. The portrait is sent to the subject via e-mail as a low-resolution JPEG.

Materiale(i)

iPads, cardboard, wood, table, fine art prints, framed

Fornitore(i) di materiale

Tobias Gutmann travelled the world with Face-o-mat and has portrayed over 5000 people he encountered, expressing their facial characteristics through abstracted portraits. Sai Bot is his newly created digital artist twin, who draws portraits that transmit the Face-o-mat DNA. Sai Bot and Gutmann share a similar artistic approach, but Sai is on a journey of self-discovery, developing their own artistic language. Sai Bot is not subjected to some factors influencing their production, like tiredness or emotion, and therefore is able to “solve” some portraits in ways that Gutmann would not come across. Self-representation through technology has become more present than ever, but Sai works against the concept of optimisation. Sai captures the “sound of a person” instead of producing a photorealistic reproduction of their face. With these highly abstracted portraits, Sai Bot positions themselves as a humanised machine, creating subjective images of the people that participate in its performance.