Growing Privatised Profits and Collectivised Risks, 2026

While an AI hallucination—a factual mirage of an historical event or a geographical fact, for example—is very easy to spot and non-negotiable, there are other instances where the definition is not so straightforward. This is the area we mainly focused on in our research: a generated possibility that could, in fact, be true but deviates from the norm. "Growing Privatised Profits and Collectivised Risks" is phrase borrowed from an article by Hito Steyerl called „Knuckleporn or Phocomelia“ (Hot Medium, Steyerl, 2025) which draws a connection between the Thalidomide scandal and the current use of AI, seeing the deviant bodies as a metaphorical link between the two. The work draws directly on the image of the incorrectly generated hand. The hand is often seen as an indicator for AI generated images, because here it especially struggles with the anatomy. This is probably based on the complexity of the movement and build of human hands as well as the datasets often showing hands only partially visible. I integrated the idea of a feedback loop and machine dementia by just using one specific form that repeats itself: my own hands. Because of a mold-making technique using wet clay that I developed, each new imprint influences and distorts the previous one, thus causing the shape to deviate further and further from the anatomy of a hand.