Episode 178: Gretchen Andrew-The Invisible Scars of AI-Driven Beauty Standards

Gretchen Andrew left Silicon Valley for the art world and now refers to herself as a “Search Engine Artist.” Gretchen uses her experience as a former computer scientist at Google and her artist training in London with Billy Childish to “hack systems of power with art, code, and glitter,” as she states it, and helps make invisible parts of technology visible. Her work has been featured in outlets such as The Washington Post, Fortune Magazine, CNN, The Los Angeles Times, and The Financial Times, among others.

In my time with Gretchen, we discuss her latest limited series, entitled Facetune Portraits: Universal Beauty, currently featured at The Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan. In this series, and in our time together, Gretchen helps us see how AI is shaping beauty standards, the pressures those standards create, and the resulting invisible scars of these developing technologies. Given the rapid pace and pervasiveness of these technologies’ impacts, this conversation is such an important one. I can’t wait for you to listen and learn more.

**Also, please know that at points this conversation includes some mature themes, in case you’d like to be mindful of when and where you listen to this episode.

Buy Melissa L. Johnson's book, Soul-Deep Beauty: Fighting for Our True Worth in a World Demanding Flawless, here. Learn more about Impossible Beauty and join the community here.