The Neo Art Magazine

Last updated on January 7th, 2025 at 09:00 pm

Gretchen Andrew, born in Los Angeles in 1988, is an artist who hacks systems of power with art, code, and glitter. With a background in Information Systems from Boston College and tech roles at Google and Intuit, Gretchen shifted her career to the art world, studying under Billy Childish. She is known for her work that blends digital manipulation with fine art, tackling themes of power, control, and the online landscape. Her solo exhibitions have spanned globally, from Dubai to London, and her work has been acquired by prestigious collections like the Monterey Museum of Art and Francisco Carolinum.

For Berlin Art Week, Gretchen engaged in a traditional portrait session with five Berlin-based influencers before subjecting their likenesses to her custom robotics, which physically applied popular “beautifying” AI. This resulted in her Facetune Portrait series, debuting during Berlin Art Week, offering a powerful commentary on digital aesthetics and beauty standards. Featured in leading exhibitions and residencies, including König Galerie, National Gallery X, and Arebyte, Gretchen’s work continues to challenge and redefine the boundaries of art in the digital age.

The Neo Art Magazine‘s Sreerupa Sil sits down with the groundbreaking artist Gretchen Andrew to discuss her innovative work that blends art, code, and artificial intelligence. Known for hacking systems of power and perception, Gretchen’s Facetune Portrait series debuted during Berlin Art Week, where she used AI-driven robotics to explore and critique digital beauty standards. This conversation dives into the philosophical and cultural implications of her work, her journey from tech to the art world, and how her unique practice continues to evolve and push the boundaries of contemporary art.

Sreerupa Sil: Where are you going next? Where’s your next destination?  

Gretchen Andrew : My next destination is Paris for the Paris Photo Art Fair, which is a context that I’m really excited to exhibit in because it is like the premier fair for photography and  obviously this work is not purely photography, but I’m very excited about it being in that like seeing like through that conversation and in the history of that medium.

Sreerupa: have you ever exhibited in Paris before?  

Gretchen:I have not. I’ve never exhibited in France even, I think. This will be particularly exciting.  Absolutely. And all so I’ll jump to my questions a little bit, but I’ll come to your Facetune projects because I really love that project. The whole idea of the project, the philosophy behind it.

Sreerupa: It’s lovely. And I think it’s just a few weeks back. I was looking at a research that was being, that I came across was where photo editing built in social media apps automatically focuses on the white, lighter skin  in a group photograph, and when I saw your project, this was like, Oh my God, this  is absolutely, it’s coming in together at one time.

Gretchen: So it’s really brilliant. Yeah, it’s unfortunate that the timing is so good, but it really is like something I learned to bring different cultures to look at this differently, even though there is a very singular look that is very light skinned. That is it perpetuates, but where it’s just in China and it’s just I was trying to talk to my students about it there. And they’re just like yeah, no of course didn’t even see it as weird or controversial, like  we’ll take photos and it would like automatically do it. And I would just be even if I look like a ghost as it is, like my skin doesn’t need to be lighter, but it still was like, let’s lighten her up a little bit. And yeah I think it’s been around for a while, but I think that there’s something around.  Our cultural attitude to it. That is in flux right now like in  Europe and America, it’s very common for people to use it, but there’s still a lot of hiding it and a lot of shame and almost a call out culture.  Whereas I think like plastic surgery, people are getting more comfortable and saying that they’ve had it done instead of pretending that they didn’t. It’s oh, you’ve got it done well. And people are actually even going  to their plastic surgeons with these apps and saying, make me look like my photo.

Sreerupa: Yes. I think it’s been there quite a lot.  I think there is a little bit of awareness, but on a mass scale, the awareness is still  lacking and it still, while some people do talk about it on the public platform, but when it comes to this kind of practice, putting it in their personal lives. It’s pretty distant that way.  

Gretchen: Yeah, and we’re not really sure really what its implications are. Like, I think it’s pretty easy to be like this creates a negative thing. And that’s obviously simplistic. Because what I want to do with the FaceTune portraits is  Not so much make that kind of like value judgment, but to be like look at how there is like a scar that comes from this. There is an impact from it. And I don’t even the cultures where we’re more comfortable with that are people are more open about. saying that they use it it’s not clear like what it’s really doing to our psyches or our relationships with each other. Like when we now meet people that don’t look like the person in the photo that dissonance is like we almost start to prefer and prioritize our digital selves. 

Sreerupa: Yes, absolutely. I think it’s especially when it comes to spaces like, social dating apps.  

Gretchen: Yes, actually. And I’ve been doing online dating and so many men will be like, you look so much better than I expected. And I was like thank you. This is like a great way to always start a date. However, I think it’s because everybody else Facetunes themselves. So people expect they don’t expect my legs to be that long and skinny because it’s like, it doesn’t like,  it’s now assumed that’s not actually how they look like that makes sense. Whereas no. I’m like, we used to be professional runner. Like those are real, but yeah, it’s I I noticed that sort of dissonance, whereas I think with men.

I’ve just discovered a new app or it’s new to me. It’s called manly and it basically does face tuning specifically for men. So I’m looking forward to getting into that because these advertisements for it are so wild. First of all, it’s called manly, which is just and it adds muscle mainly in the jaw.  But like with men, I’m always like, Okay. Was that photo like eight years ago? Do you like it doesn’t seem to be recent, but they don’t.  It’s that their form of photo manipulation is to time travel a little bit. And I have a collector from Korea and she was saying that like when they do family portraits there,  it’s just automatic and common that everybody gets facetuned in these family portraits, but then you have, Three, sometimes four generations of adults who all look 25. Like your parents and your grandparents and everyone gets.

Sreerupa: It’s weird to see in a photograph where everybody is of the same age. So how do you feel about it? How did it come to you? How did this whole FaceTune portraits come to you  one sudden day? How is it?  

Gretchen: So in my practice I work with making technologies and their impact Visible  and I’ve been thinking it was about two years ago when I started to develop this, maybe two and a half now I was at Art Basel and generative art was all the rage and all the buzz. And I was like, Oh, like generative art. I’m going to make degenerative art. I’m going to make art that instead of being created with algorithms gets destroyed by algorithms. And  so I just started thinking conceptually about what it meant for And where in our lives algorithms weren’t building something up, but we’re tearing something down, weren’t like adding complexity, but like destroying complexity because I actually think this form of algorithm is way more common, like translation algorithms and search algorithms and algorithms used in marketing are reducing instead of actually we’ve got all of this technology and instead of making life more exciting, it’s making it more boring.

So I was thinking about where we disagree, where our lives disagree with that process. And yeah have, I had like related ideas that I’ll probably pursue at some point where I can make a painting about how I remember my Sixth birthday, and then I can feed like an algorithm, a bunch of photos from it. and it can come and say no, this is how it actually happens. This is, like the, like your memory or whatever disagrees with reality. Or this is a drawing of how I remember my grandmother. And then the algorithm could come and be like, no, you like, you’re wrong.

So I had thought about memory as this place where technology really intervenes but then really settled on wanting to find a very concrete example where we do battle with AI’s idea of who we are. And yeah, then from there, just like it was clear that this was like the form of the story that best was able to convey. But I like to have my work be understandable and approachable by a lot of people, especially people who don’t deal with things like algorithms and AI. So through it, they may have a new curiosity about it. Like I always say, I want to try and trick people into learning about computers.

Sreerupa: It’s very interesting because of this concept of degenerative art that you are talking about right now with so much AI.  They’re creating this picture perfectly. It’s a very perfect picture of us.  Perfect. Perfect picture. You can. Hardly find any flaw, the flaw that actually meets a human.

Gretchen: I don’t know if you’ve seen any of these in particular, but I have some of these FaceTune portraits where it almost looks like I’m an AI generated person who just fails at looking real. We’re really like, I’m a real person who now starts to look like I was fake. And there’s like this uncanny Valley in reverse. 

Sreerupa: Yeah, totally. And it’s, and it is actually, it looks  more fake than real.  And  in terms of this degenerative art, is it, when you’re, when you’ve done this Facetune portrait., how did you do this? In terms of the machine, in terms of AI, because you are using AI in a very different way.  

Gretchen: Yeah. Because of all the AI and the algorithms I take from these apps. I’ve like this online studio visit that you can also go through, but this chapter three, which we’re skipping to, because you, do you already know some of the projects are these different robots. So the first robot that I have is an oil paint printer where it takes any photograph and it reproduces it and paints which is how I end up with photographs that are paintings. And then I have the second robot  that basically is just like an X, Y access plotter. And what it does is it has the same lines that the, like the same in a digital photo.

These algorithms are moving around pixels, but what happens when it’s on a bunch of wet paint being applied by a brush is these pixels are moving and becoming brushstrokes. Instead of moving paint. Instead of moving pixels, we’re moving paint.  The second robot itself that’s applying these lines is actually quite dumb. It’s just an X, Y plotter,  but it’s getting all of its decision making and all of its logic from the algorithms called Facetune or from zoom touch up my appearance or whatever is trending on tech talk at the time. I  go and give that code to the robot to make the initial change.  Here’s an example. This is an example of one where I think I look quite generated. Like it yeah, I guess it has that uncanny valley.Yeah. Okay. Did that answer your question about robots?

Sreerupa: Yeah. So you made these robots?. 

Gretchen:  The first robot is made by matter labs, which is a, like a creative robotics partner of mine. The second robot. 

Sreerupa: That’s very interesting.Iit must be taking a lot of time for you to make these robots.  

Gretchen: Yeah. Like I have, I said, I’ve been working on this project technically and conceptually for two years, and also for those two years, I wasn’t  traveling the way I am now, but now that they are I think of them as this is like they’re leaving of the studio and going into the world. So I’m running around the world, shepherding them,  China and Paris and Berlin and San Francisco and everything. 

Sreerupa: Brilliant. So this was officially launched, the Facedune series was officially launched in Berlin?

Gretchen: It was the first time that they were on public display, and we got to have a featured exhibition at Berlin Art Week for people to get to see them for the first time. 

Sreerupa: So do you remember a comment from a viewer that really resonated with you or maybe shocked you?

Gretchen: So for Berlin, it was particularly interesting because I worked with Berlin based influencers. I’ve been doing this process on myself and on celebrities of  the Miss Universe contestants, but to actually work with someone who I also took their portrait  and said, okay, like this process will annihilate you. It will take what makes you and destroy it. So what can we do in the initial photographic portrait process to try and retain any aspect of yourself, Like, where do you want to be? What are you going to wear? These things are untouched by the algorithm. However, the end result is they don’t recognize themselves.

These are not portraits of these people anymore. They are portraits of a homogeneous, sameness person where everyone was different ages and different races but all five of these portraits ended up looking like everyone had the same face, everyone had the same body and there it was like the i think that’s something that i had been seeing done to my own image, but to see it done to other people and then to see their reactions where they would just be like, I don’t see myself and there aren’t that many lines. We’re talking about, like maybe an average of 10 marks, but 10 marks will just completely leave you gone. 

Sreerupa:  All right. And then was it acceptable? Was it shocking for the influencers or the pictures that you did it with how was the reaction because it’s people are usually used to seeing themselves in a particular way and especially in this day and age of social media. Everything has an editing option.  And in that situation where everybody is perfecting  their body, that face and completely destructing  it, how is it, how did people take it? 

Gretchen: Yeah. Like it was they were definitely like maybe a little unnerved, even though they knew that this was like part of the process and part of what we wanted, the story that we wanted to share. And also like they would show it to their friends or their friends came to the opening and then they would just be like, I don’t recognize you at all. If it weren’t for your dog, I would have no idea. This is you. 

Sreerupa:  All right. It’s wonderful. I think it’s in some way or the other, it is required because in life, that’s what happens, right? There’s a perfect time going on. And then there’s something, there’s that one moment or a few moments that completely changes your life altogether, changes you altogether, so it’s.  So I’m very intrigued to know why you choose AI? Just going back to the beginning of it. And why did you choose AI as an art of medium of expression, especially with this I did read about you, you were working. In Silicon Valley and a huge company. And then you moved completely to the practice. 

Gretchen: Yeah like AI algorithms, like really what I’m trying to get these are things that I learned and I studied and that I worked in. So part of me feels a responsibility to share more of how- Like, when I was working in tech, I felt like we were just using technology to  manipulate our attention and sell us things we don’t need. And that’s mostly what AI is used for, right? It’s yes, it’s going to cure cancer and, like, all of this stuff, but really that’s not where the resources are.It’s actually not where we’re putting the somewhat limited resources of AI right now because of things like chips and processors. AI is not like at this point in time because of hardware. It’s not like it has an infinite amount of capacity and we’re using it like frivolously and like it, to me it represents The most contemporary conversation we can have.Ultimately, these are portraits. These exist in a history of how people choose to represent themselves and what that says both about them and about the time that we live in a position Facetune portraits within the history Of portraiture is to really ask like what is the most  contemporary questions we can have about how we represent ourselves and there’s no avoiding AI social media and algorithms in questions of how we represent ourselves today.It’s like a form of mirror, right? Like us, the algorithms also are showing how they see us, that they do see us all as the same, that it’s easier for them when we’re all the same and we start to conform to their hierarchy of needs.  

Sreerupa: A particular pattern. And this pattern is something that absolutely strikes me when it comes to algorithms, when it comes to technology, because they always try to keep you organized. Technology is always trying to organize,  putting you in some kind of a bracket. 

Gretchen: Yeah Oh, you’re a woman of this age and I don’t see any pics of your children. You must be having fertility issues. Let’s just Oh my God, are you my aunt? What is this about? It’s crazy.

Sreerupa: when you started working with AI, how many years has it been?I think it’s been more than  seven, eight years?I think it’s been more than  seven, eight years. 

Gretchen: Oh yeah. 15. 

Sreerupa: Yeah. So you started off in a different generation altogether when AI was just, kind of people, the people outside. Really, the world didn’t know too much about AI when you started. And when you started, of course, even now there is a traditional art in the arts.  In the art market and the art scenario where we talk distinctly about exhibition and collection and the collectors specifically. Did you face any kind of challenge over there? Coming up with a completely new medium for art? And especially, we’ve seen that NFT, whether it’s a bubble or not, et cetera, there’s a lot of conversation going on over there, but what kind of challenges did you face? How did you overcome it?  

Gretchen: Yeah. Like really, like I was along for coming from an algorithmic technology background and I come from a painting background. So when I left my job  jobs in, in tech I went and I trained with Billy childish and like a very classical Oil painting context, oil paintings are what made me fall in love with art, made me want to become an artist  and the way that the world and market works for oil painting is the same way it works for these face to portraits.

They’re all. Oil on canvas, completely unique images that tell a particular story that involves robotics and AI and algorithms but don’t aren’t dependent upon  those. You don’t need to understand all of those aspects. You don’t need to plug this in. You don’t need to. To worry about technical decay and your ability to keep this as an art object.And that’s interesting to me, like I said, because I love painting and also because this is almost a reverse engineering of how the market works. If you want to invest in an AI artwork.

Investing in one that is 100 percent also a painting has a conservative bend to it as well, where maybe 10 years ago, even  as an artist, I really would have had to work with galleries that specialize in artists that work with technology, but now everyone’s using it to some extent. And it’s not like a niche anymore. 

Sreerupa: How are collectors viewing it? What kind of responses are you getting from collectors?  

Gretchen: Yeah I’m particularly interested about this in Paris where we have a lot of people queuing up to see the work. A lot of people are very curious about the opportunity for the commission process. So that’s something that I’m figuring out how to properly explore. Because people  are curious about how this would happen to them. 

Sreerupa: Yeah, that gives a very personalization  of  the art that you own. 

Gretchen: Yeah, and like in the history of portraiture, that’s really everyone, many people who are not Marilyn Monroe or will buy a Warhol screen print of Marilyn Monroe.But the, with these, it can’t be so dependent upon who the image is of because at the end of the day, the image ends up, Being less of that person. So there’s a curiosity around privacy as well. Like people who might not traditionally want a portrait. They can end, they can go through a portrait process where they end up not they’re in it, but they’re not. And I think that also for people who are not all over social media, personally there’s an appeal to that as well, like an anonymity that can come through the process. 

Sreerupa: Interesting, you did mention Billy Childish or being trained by him, being mentored by him.How did you come to train with him? Because yeah, I’ve read quite a lot about him, about his poetry.

Gretchen: I had been trying to spend time in the studio of artists. Who’s work I admire and I absolutely love his work. So a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, like the eight degrees of separation. And this time, I got an invitation to a studio and he said, what, show me what you’re working on. And I showed him my portfolio and he was just like, this is so bad.  And I was like, I said, Billy, I know that’s why I’m here. Cause I knew it was like, it wasn’t great. It was terrible really. And I was lucky that I met him at a time where his son was also learning how to paint and he was at a place in his life and career where he was interested in sharing his particular knowledge and way of working because it’s not it’s not like my only way of working but it was exactly  who I learned, wanted to learn how to paint from.

Sreerupa: Okay. I think this will be my last question. What’s next? What’s the next series you’re planning on?  

Gretchen: Yeah I’m going to be doing face to portraits for quite a while. The there’s different things to explore. Like I said, doing men, I think it’s a disservice to this conversation to to portray it as just like a young female problem or young female issue, because it’s not so doing series with more men, I’m working on ballet dancers right now, which are really just gorgeous, the Miss Universe contestants. And then, yeah, I guess it’s starting to maybe explore the idea  of opening this up to, series collectors for that commission process to take them through that, the initial portrait and that consultation where we talk about how we retain themselves and what the album will and won’t touch are some of the things that I’m going to be exploring with, within this series in the next year or two.

Sreerupa: All the best. It’s a wonderful project, and I think within AI and art, when the world is full with Miidjourneys and Dal E’s it’s a kind of AI that actually is pretty art integrated. And that’s why I was so interested to talk to you. 

Gretchen: Thank you so much for taking the time to do so.

Sreerupa: Thanks. Bye bye.