In the Clouds with Arvida Byström
In the Clouds is a pocket-sized book spanning 164 pages, by Nuda and Arvida Byström. The book has a perforated cover and can be locked with a piercing, to keep outsiders from looking into this NSFW material.
The book is a compilation of images from Arvida’s latest project in which she has generated nudes of herself from existing photographs using the AI tool ”Undress.app” to digitally remove her clothes. Between December 13, 2023, and April 1, 2024, these images were sold under the false pretense that they were real on an OnlyFans-esque app where people could chat with “Arvida Byström” and purchase her nudes for “sunbeams.” The voice of “Arvida” on the app was generated through an AI, trained on interviews with the real Arvida Byström to learn as much as possible about her art and preferences.
The provocative imagery in the book evolves from pornstar fantasy into scandalous, sometimes repelling, images that the AI has fucked up in different ways, challenging ideas of what’s hot and what’s not. The book also contains three essays and short stories reveling in the subject of intimacy and technology, by star philosopher Slavoj Žižek, cultural critic C/M Edenborg, and fan-fic novelist Olivia Kan-Sperling.
