Rachel’s films exist within a world of fantasy, illusion, and artifice. In her earlier work, she used costume, makeup, and prosthetics to transform herself into a range of characters, placing them within richly detailed, hyper-saturated digital environments created using green screen. 

In her 2024 film DUCK, which was previously displayed at FACT as part of gaming exhibition Art Plays Games, she incorporated machine learning for the first time, deepfaking her face into various James Bond actors. In her new exhibition, They've Got Your Eyes, Rachel pushes this exploration of artifice even further, merging her visual language with that of an AI model. Drawing parallels between today’s AI boom and Victorian invention, the film examines the motives driving advanced AI, and how fantasies of power shape its development. The work explores the tension between artistic authorship and machine agency. 

In many ways, the process has been traditional: Rachel wrote the script, developed the storyboard, performed every character herself, and shot the film in her studio in Glasgow. 

The green-screen footage was then edited, with backgrounds generated using AI models such as FLUX and Wan 2.2 workflows within ComfyUI, a graphical interface that runs locally on a computer. These models were trained solely on Rachel’s previous works and likeness, with support from BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) at Edinburgh College of Art.

This choice was deliberate and central to the work’s themes of authorship and ownership. The work uses AI in a way similar to rotoscoping: an animation technique in which each frame is painted over, allowing Rachel to maintain artistic control over camera movement, framing, and lighting while preserving the integrity of her performance.

They’ve Got Your Eyes is a response to the ongoing AI arms race and the havoc wrought in the blind pursuit of ‘progress’. The work continues Rachel’s recent exploration of power in the age of AI and asks: as ego shapes technological development, how do we disentangle scientific achievement from the darker side of AI’s relentless growth?

They've Got Your Eyes is on display until Sunday 16 August. Find out more and plan your visit →