Stuck in the Middle (2025) - Wearbale AI

Stuck in the Middle is a participatory performance-installation in which five AI wearables stage live arguments across the wearer's body. Each device embodies one side of a familiar cultural binary - good/evil, happy/sad, male/female, rich/poor, fast/slow. Each wearable is equipped with a tiny camera, Raspberry Pi, button, and a real-time connection to GPT through OpenAI's API. When the button is pressed an image of the wearer's surrounding is captured and sent to GPT as input. Then One of the AI agents, sitting on the wearer's shoulder responds to the surrounding environment with a directive; its opposing counterpart immediately contradicts it, issuing the reverse command. The two agents continue arguing with one another for a while, instead of offering clarity or guidance, the AIs generate a flood of conflicting instructions, revealing how large language models absorb and amplify cultural stereotypes and either/or thinking. The wearer becomes the contested middle ground where these forces collide, exposing how subjects are continually nudged toward fixed categories that rarely match the complexity of lived experience. Refusing to resolve the conflict, Stuck in the Middle frames hesitation, ambivalence, and noncompliance as forms of agency, an insistence on staying with the in-between rather than choosing a side.