Algorithmic Identity is a self-portraiture project and online performance that examines identity formation in digital environments. The images were generated using machine-learning programs fed with image prompts from dating apps, then merged with 3D scans of my body to create profile pictures for my own dating app accounts. For the text of my profiles, I ran my genuine responses to app prompts through a machine-learning text generator. 

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By making the algorithms behind these portraits visible, the project highlights how algorithmic recommendations influence deeply personal aspects of our lives—what music we hear, what clothes we wear, even who we fall in love with. Staging the project on dating apps connected this feedback loop between algorithms and identity to one of the most intimate and vulnerable human desires: forming relationships. 

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The project was designed to invite participation and spark reflection from matches on the apps. Immediately after publishing the profiles, I was banned from the dating apps for violating their terms. Ironically, the project that got me banned revealed much more about me and how I think than any dating profile I had created before.  

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Through its visible glitches, Algorithmic Identity acknowledges the ways digital processes shape both our self-perception and our evolving understanding of what it means to be human.