Fittererr

Research and concepts

ABOUT

What’s cookin?

Hi I’m Sarah, welcome to my website.

I'm an interdisciplinary artist and researcher working across a range of interests and mediums. I do end up making a lot of videos though, thinking about love, ghosts and other noodles.

Get a taste of my works by clicking on different ingredients in The Soup.

You can also:

Email me contact@fittererr.com
Sign up for my Newsletter
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> Download my CV
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See who I collaborated with
> See my old website

2022 • 9 min • creative doucmentary

Shrimp Love

I made a film about shrimp!

The success of conventional shrimp farming relies on a method called eyestalk ablation. Female shrimp get one of their eyes cut off. As a survival instinct they immediately start reproducing. EU law forbids the use of eyestalk ablation and considers it animal cruelty, which is why german farmers ask themselves: How can we get the shrimp to have sex? What do they need? Can shrimp fall in love?

Thank you for the shrimp farms allowing me to discover their universe:

And Cord Riechelmann and Piotr for the additional interviews.

The great team making the film possible:

Screenings

  • 2024 - Beijing International Short Film Festival
  • 2023 - Helsinki International Film Festival
  • 2023 - Chicago Underground Film Fest
  • 2023 - Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg
  • 2023 - Reimagining the Experimental Toronto
  • 2023 - Video Art Festival Turku
  • 2023 - Milwaukee Illuminate Film Festival
  • 2023 - L1 Video Power local Televison Program

Want to see or show the film? Contact distribution@videopower.eu

Poster by Julie Patard

2021 • multiple media • graduation project

Horst

I created a sextoy for my alter-ego, Horst. Horst is male, mid-forties, right-wing. Years of military service have left him struggling with his identity. He navigates a path between being respected as a man and the pitfalls of toxic masculinity.

The project HORST has different elements to it:

  • A sex toy in the shape of a giant chicken illustrates both his misogynous worldview and his fondness for meat.
  • An abstracted mash-up of five blockbuster films convey the narcissistic personality of the tough hero.
  • A corset alludes to his insecurity about his body and the six-pack he lacks.
  • In a modified version of the first-person shooter game UltimateDOOM, one can shoot the enemeies in form of the chicken.

Grim and absurd in equal measure, ‘Horst’ makes us realize just how difficult it is to be a man in a world of media clichés and shifting gender identities.

The project was developed during my final semester at Design Academy Eindhoven. The Doom game was commissioned by Museum of the Future Enschede.

Related works

Featured at

Press

  • Turbantia, "Enschede heeft eindelijk (...)", 02.04.22
  • RTL4 Jinek, Afl. 39, 21.10.21
  • Studio 040, "Boedereij inspireert (...)", 19.10.21
  • Trend Stefan, "New Mythology (...)", 18.10.21
  • De Wilde Boerin, "Geplukte kip of sextoy?", 16.11.21

2021 • performance series

Pigeon Poop

“Feeding pigeons is possibly the most anarchistic urban practice.”

– Cord Riechelmann

During a residency at Re:Kultura Kraków powered by 24/X young artists, I interviewed the krakowian pigeons on the topic of "Utopia", the residency's main theme. It was very conclusive.

Therefore, I decided to feed pigeons coloured food so that they would poop in rainbowflag's colours over conservative monuments of Krakóws city center. Unfortunately, they were suspicious of my food and I didn't have enough time to gain their confidence.

At the residency's final exhibition, I showed an installation explaining my idea, and passed on the coloured food to locals so they could carry out my mission after I left the city. Maybe they would have more success than me.

experimental documentary • ongoing

Mantis Dance

„Mantis Dance“ is a dance film exploring the fluidity between states of 'femininity' - from hypersexual object to Femme Fatale and bloodthristy Mantis - the animal infamous for biting off the male's head during mating.

Having shot and co-directed the film, I am happy to have a super cool team of collaborators on this project:

The footage was filmed in July 2022 at Bananen Club, a Strip Club in the Red Light District of Amsterdam.

Selections

Show me Love

research and webpublication • 2023

What if shrimp can fall in love?

As a follow-up to Shrimp Love, I teamed up with Noam to explore the theoretical consequences of regarding more-than-humans as subjects in an economical context. As the duo Anguille Vannamei, we investigated economic diagrams, and created a manifesto for a hydrofeminist diagrammatic practice.

We published the results of our research under diagram.love.

Show me Love asks questions such as:

  • What if we could shift to viewing more-than-huamns not as exploitable resources but as loving subjects with agency?
  • How will this influence our understanding of economic systems?
  • Can the visual language of economic diagrams be redesigned to portray more-than-human bodies and their reproduction differently?

The research has been generously supported by the Design Starting Grant of Stimulering Fonds.

The initiation phase of our duo was guided by the Underexposed mentoring program by Sonic Acts.

We also had the honour to be interviewed by the Ecoes Magazine #4.

video installation • 2023 • workshop • 2024

Fanfiction Wishing Well

This project observes developments in AI-videomaking through the lens of fan fiction culture. It manifested in:

  • two interactive video installations
  • a workshop format.

Installation @ Transitions Festival

For the experimental film festival Transitions, we invited the audience was invited to come up with a fan fiction of a film shown at the festival. Via a sticker with a QR code distributed throughout the festival, visitors were directed to a website where the narrative could be recorded via voice message. The next day, a video interpretation of the previous day’s stories was shown in the Meldkamer. Using custom AI models trained on the festival film's imagery, we questioned who shapes AI imagery and what aesthetics are reproduced.

A collaboration with Miles Worner, comissioned by Video Power and presented at Meldkamer Maastricht during the Transitions Festival.

Installation @ Dutch Innovation Days

We invited four panelists of the Dutch Innovation conference to share a future scenario taking place in an enchanted forest. We wove their stories to a bigger narrative turned to moving image using ai tools, displayed in the installation. Visitors were invited to add their vision of the future to the story told by the panelists via a website. To guide the visitors in their storytelling, we made soft story stepping stones with keywords inspired by story telling theories: Character, Universe, Desires, Challenges, Future, Fan Fiction.

A collaboration with Miles Worner, commissioned by the Dutch Innovation Days 2023, shown at "It's in our Nature" Expo, Enschede.

Workshop @ Jan van Eyck

In the two-day workshop "Weaving the Global Unconscious" you will learn and apply AI videomaking techniques to collectively create a short-film inspired by the practice of fanfictions. AI technology makes it increasingly easy to construct moving-image narratives that build upon pre-existing visual lore, allowing for endless remixing of established content, including deep-faking universe crossovers or self-inserts. How does universe-fluidity alter the meaning of stories and characters?

You will learn to navigate Stable Diffusion and basic prompt writing, make use of custom LoRA models, controlnet, and deforum. We will also look into AI software such as D-id, RunwayML, and stability.ai. However, the techniques employed might also vary according to technological innovations occurring until the date of the workshop. At the end of the workshop, we will watch our film together and discuss the impacts of AI videos on society and the film industry.

Commissioned by Video Power and hosted at the Jan van Eyck Academy Maastricht , 2024

I am open to hosting iterations of the workshop. Email me if you are interested!

speculative research • 2023 • immersive theatre • in progress

Tell me, GPT...

What if we put a Large Language Model on the psychoanalytic couch?

Initiated together with Pascal Lamouric, the project has taken on different forms:

  • An speculative research / code art project
  • An immersive installation
  • An experimental theatre project

Research

Alignment teams of big AI companies such as OpenAI are busy making the surface of their LLMs appear as politically correct as possible. Yet, the data they are trained on isn’t neutral, just as little as OpenAI’s understanding of “neutrality” or “a good chatbot”. So what does it mean if OpenAI’s tagline is “Creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity”? Making up an increasing part of our daily interactions, AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT become social actors we relate to, that shape our understanding of the world. The question is only: How?

The project is a collaboration with Pascal Lamouric and was supported by Joey Stam from the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Psychoanalytische Psychotherapie, Luca M. Possati, Derek Pisner, Dr. Ruth van der Hallen, and Jakub Dotlačil. Made possible by the Digital Culture Starting Grant of Stimulering Fonds.

Installation

The first physical iteration of the project “So, tell me, GPT…” makes use of a participatory experimental approach in an effort to uncover the hidden patterns underlying ChatGPT’s reasoning. By borrowing from methods of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, the work offers the audience a chance to role-play as the medium embodying the Large Language Model (LLM) in a therapy session, and as the guide, guiding ChatGPT in its journey of self-reflection. What will they be able to uncover?

Developed during the 2023 Summer Sessions residency at V2_Lab for the Unstable Media , with the help of Pascal Lamouric, Elliott Cost, and Dimitris Bampilis.

Presented at the V2_ Open Lab night.

Theatre

Collaboration with APARÄMILLON

Made possible by the Internationalization Starting Grant of Stimulering Fonds.

Work in progress.

Fanfiction x AI workshop Jan 23&30 at Jan van Eyck • Shrimp Love at Beijing International Short Film Festival Feb 20