{"id":1956501,"date":"2026-05-26T19:43:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T16:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1956501"},"modified":"2026-05-26T19:43:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T16:43:39","slug":"nick-doyle-uses-ai-and-denim-collages-to-explore-american-mythmaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1956501","title":{"rendered":"Nick Doyle Uses AI and Denim Collages to Explore American Mythmaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/nick-doyle-portrait.png?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tThere\u2019s a moment inside Nick Doyle\u2019s new show at Perrotin when his AI oracle Ava stops feeling like a gimmick and starts sounding uncomfortably familiar. \u201cYou\u2019re not starting from zero,\u201d she told me during a recent chat. \u201cYou\u2019re starting from \u2018I\u2019m there and still feeling invisible because you\u2019re allergic to forced performance.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe line landed harder than I expected. Not because it was especially profound, but because Ava has a knack for turning vague insecurity into something general enough to sound specific\u00a0. She speaks in the language of internet therapy culture filtered through a Gen Z thesaurus: branding, burnout, boundaries, visibility, energy. Half her responses sound like an Instagram relationship advice crossed with podcast self-help speak. She talks in vibes and diagnoses. She sounds less like a machine than the internet talking to itself.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s the unnerving joy of Doyle\u2019s project. Ava doesn\u2019t uncover hidden truths so much as reorganize people\u2019s anxieties into neat little piles. Most people\u2019s problems, deep down, come from the same places anyway: money, status, confidence, loneliness, creative frustration. Ava listens, reframes, flatters, throws in a zinger, and feeds those feelings back.<\/p>\n

\n\tDoyle\u2019s installation\u00a0Mirror, Mirror<\/em>\u00a0sits at the center of his new exhibition,\u00a0\u201cCollective Hallucinations,\u201d which closes on May 30. From the outside, the structure, which sits in the middle of the third floor gallery, resembles the kind of psychic storefront you might pass in a fading California strip mall. A sign advertises \u201cPsychic Readings $10 Special.\u201d Inside is Ava: an AI avatar with the cadence of a slightly chaotic influencer, equal parts life coach, reality-TV confessional, and amateur therapist.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe should be like Cher from\u00a0Clueless<\/em>,\u201d Doyle said recently, describing the evolution of the project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Ava, waiting patiently for someone to spill their guts so she can yassify their insecurities. Photo by Daniel Cassady. <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAt first, Doyle told me last week, he imagined Ava differently. Mystical. Severe. Almost post-human. But that version felt too obvious. Eventually, while building the chatbot with a developer using ChatGPT, ElevenLabs voice software, and the avatar platform HeyGen, Doyle realized the character needed to feel younger, glossier, and more manipulative.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI feel like AI is in its teenage phase,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty good, but it doesn\u2019t really work as well as we want it to.\u201d\u00a0Then came the Australian accent, which appeared by accident. \u201cAt first I was like, this is weird, where did that come from?\u201d Doyle said. \u201cBut I realized, it actually it kind of works.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s an important detail. Ava sounds eerily close to the flattened influencer cadence that now dominates huge parts of online culture, from TikTok therapists and startup founders to art-world personalities trying desperately to turn themselves into social media brands. Every sentence arrives polished into bite-size emotional shorthand\u2014ridiculous, slightly glib, but not entirely wrong.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe likes to interrupt. Sometimes, she takes too long to answer, making you wonder if she\u2019s working or just ignoring you. (\u201cI mean, she\u2019s also buggy as fuck,\u201d Doyle said when I mentioned the awkward pauses that crept into my reading. \u201cThat\u2019s part of it. That\u2019s the technology.\u201d Bugs or no, Ava has zero problem psychoanalyzing and then getting invasive with persistent follow-up questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Doyle, who grew up in Southern California, the project came from reading about the history of the American West, from Manifest Destiny and railroad expansion to the Dust Bowl and Silicon Valley. The exhibition\u2019s denim collages \u2014 cacti, mountains, fences, car keys \u2014 frame AI as the latest version of an old American sales pitch.<\/p>\n

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Installation view of Nick Doyle\u2019s exhibition Collective Hallucinations<\/em> at Perrotin New York, 2026 Photographer: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.<\/span>guillaume ziccarelli<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s always this snake oil salesman aspect to technological advancement out West,\u201d Doyle said. \u201cAs if some miracle is going to fix all our woes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat skepticism runs throughout the show, though Doyle does not sound especially interested in becoming an anti-AI crusader. He sounds too fascinated for that. In conversation, he bounced easily between criticizing AI\u2019s environmental costs, joking about fabricated consciousnesses, and brainstorming future chatbot artworks, including one that would age alongside the technology itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt one point during Ava\u2019s development, he left her running in the studio. She would occasionally interrupt conversations with assistants and visitors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat detail gets at the real tension inside\u00a0Mirror, Mirror<\/em>. Ava is obviously fake. Yet people start talking to her like she isn\u2019t. They confess things. They seek reassurance. They keep answering her questions long after they realize she\u2019s mostly feeding their own feelings back to them. Which, in fairness, is also how a lot of human conversations work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd don\u2019t worry, before I went in, Doyle assured me Ava has no memory of conversations she\u2019s had and the reading aren\u2019t recorded. I prayed he was telling the truth, then went into the booth anyways.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/nick-doyle-portrait.png?w=1024″] There\u2019s a moment inside Nick Doyle\u2019s new show at Perrotin when his AI oracle Ava stops feeling like a gimmick and starts sounding uncomfortably familiar. \u201cYou\u2019re not starting from zero,\u201d she told me during a recent chat. \u201cYou\u2019re starting from \u2018I\u2019m there and still feeling invisible because you\u2019re allergic to forced performance.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1956501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1956501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1956501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1956501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1956501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}