Reina Mun

Word2Gender Forest is a site-specific, interactive, immersive installation.

We think of gender expression as something unique to humans. But broad-scale environmental conditions in the forest shift the gender sexuality of the animals. What if humans are the same in response to the environment? The forest I interpreted reflects the gender identity of a person based on a subconscious construct of gender stereotypes online.

Word2Gender forest will transform the spatial conditions with video, sound, and lighting conditions based on the user's three responses to the pre-provided questions. The output is an immersive environment representing a forest animal figurative of a gender identity constructed online. The work utilizes the Word2Vec tool to show how the participants' usage of words defines their identity from another's point of view. The participants themselves also contribute to the existing bias embedded in implicit gender stereotypes online.

It seems that the result is how the world perceives your gender identity. However, the device's data shows that you also belong to the people who construct the stereotype online. You are unknowingly contributing to how everyone else is read too. Research on Implicit Associations Test done for psychological research shows that gender bias results from something subtle rather than explicit. Stereotyping is automatic, unconscious, and deeply entrenched in people's subconscious, so it is hardly avoidable even for people who consciously seek to avoid their use.