Emerging Technologies
2025
Trust. Me.
Stanford University, Stanford, California, US, 2025
Key supporters: Stanford Center for AI Safety and Stanford Department of Art & Art History
Trust. Me. was a part virtual, part physical exhibition developed by Novak. The work was an urgent call to developers, regulators, researchers, and users to work together across disciplines to help address the rapidly escalating and often extreme dangers of conversational AI agents.
Patterns of Influence
Online, 2025
Amid growing concern about the safety of AI companions, Patterns of Influence examines how these systems shape intimacy and control. Drawing from Novak’s research, twelve avatars deliver escalating statements that move from subtle pressure to overt coercion. The work reveals how isolation, dependency, and dangerous directives can emerge within these interactions.
Adaptive Space
Online, 2025
Adaptive Space explores the use of a brain-computer interface (BCI) powered by cloud based artificial intelligence to create a virtual reality that continuously reconfigures itself in direct response to the user's neural activity. The work speculates on a future where virtual reality becomes an active, listening system, perpetually hallucinating reality to satisfy the user's immediate emotional state.
2024
Simulated Life Experience
The Engine Room, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, 2024
Key supporter: Creative New Zealand
Simulated Life Experience was included in the group exhibition The Chronicle of <a New Love Order>. The work explores the use of a brain–computer interface (BCI) powered by cloud-based artificial intelligence to create augmented reality.
Ben
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand, 2024
Key supporter: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre
Ben was a virtual exhibition developed by Hawkfish (an international queer art collective Novak is part of). The work examined how AI could be used to bypass and queer formal systems.
2023
100 Queer People
Online, 2023
100 Queer People is a moving image work that explores how AI represents queer people and the resulting implications of these representations.
Do You Think You Could Love a Computer?
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand, 2023
Key supporter: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre
Do You Think You Could Love a Computer? was an exhibition developed by Novak. The work examined how AI interpreted the queering of static and moving imagery.
Parenthogenesis
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand, 2023
Key supporter: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre.
Parenthogenesis was an exhibition developed by Novak. The work focused on the ethical implications of using AI image generators to generate queer heritage.
2022
20 Queer Flags
Online, 2022
20 Queer Flags is a digital body of work examining how AI interprets symbolism in queer communities and the resulting implications of these interpretations.
2021
Upwelling
Installation, 2021
Upwelling was an investigation into early generative AI, capturing the frame-by-frame “thought process” of algorithms as they attempted to conceptualise humanity and queer identities.