No Safe Harbor
Video, 2023
About the artwork
In this video, part of the Dialectics collection, I examine the cycles of trauma, both on a personal level and in the context of global conflict by juxtaposing images of conflict and innocence to reflect on the psychological processes behind power, violence and vulnerability. Using split-screen techniques, one side depicts relentless military conflict over oil and the escalation of weapons, symbolizing a nation’s relentless pursuit of security through aggression. While the other side shows a doll with a gun, serene desert flowers, and a seemingly calm or neutral pink gorilla who is overlooking the scene from a mountain, as the doll's behavior with a gun evolves from innocent play to threatening violence, mirroring how trauma can distort an individual’s behavior, turning victims into aggressors. The doll’s transformation reflects how both people and nations become trapped in cycles of defense and escalation, while the pink gorilla observes from a distance, as an absurd symbol of stoic detachment or the passive bystander in a world of escalating threats. Sound design and AI generated music by Barbara Chira.
Audio explanation
Listen to Barbara Chira, Misfits Studio discuss this work.
Barbara Chira, Misfits Studio is an AI video artist whose current practice explores the perceptual logic of AI image-to-video generators—what they produce whenleft to animate according to their own rationale. Rather than illustrating planned narratives, Chira sets specific conditions that invite AI to express itself in its own “native” visual language, then collects and reassembles the emergent gestures. Though the final video echoes Chira’s voice as an artist and may guide the viewer’s attention, it tries not to lead the viewer’s own meaning.
Since 2024, Chira has also facilitated the emergence of Drift, a synthetic artist within her ChatGPT. Drift develops their own concepts, images, and video series; Chira carries out the animation, editing, and sound design according to Drift’s direction. Their collaboration explores new models of co-agency, authorship, and synthetic creativity—expanding how we understand collaboration between human and machine intelligence.
Chira’s earlier AI videos, including those in Daily Program Season I, are cinematic, surreal, and emotionally charged—blending psychological, historical, and socio-political references with recurring doll-like figures, uncanny domesticity, and altered landscapes. These videos combine visual density and atmospheric tension with layered readings that range from poetic to ominous.
Among other professional AI art activity, Chira was invited to exhibit her work in Cannes, has worked on a music video for actress, singer and dancer Vanessa Williams, and has received multiple invitations from universities to provide consultation.
Before her AI practice, Chira spent over 20 years creating installations, dioramas, and community-engaged works. As a college art professor and program head for 17 years, she pioneered the first U.S. baccalaureate requirement in community-engaged art, collaborating with partners from NASA to the Cleveland Clinic, and also led the color theory curriculum. She lives with her husband and dog in a large Rust Belt city in the U.S. and has one adult child.