Exploring artificial intelligence through tattooing… 

Do you remember the Knowle West Mobile Tattoo Parlour from several years ago? We invited local people to upload photos and stories of their tattoos to a database of Knowle West tattoos. Together, we archived the personal stories and memories that are stored in body art.  

Recently we have been looking back at this database with fresh eyes… and this time exploring what role artificial intelligence (AI) could play in the tattooing process!  

This conversation was sparked through a collaboration between KWMC, Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI), LV, artist Alice Stewart and local tattoo artists. We wanted to breathe new life into the tattoo database while discovering what our community think of AI and data privacy, particularly in relation to tattooing. 

Left: Screenshot of Knowle West Tattoo Database. Middle: Alice Stewart with tattoo created through AI Tattoo Parlour. Right: ideas generated by the AI Tattoo Parlour.

AI could be a powerful tool in our community for better or worse, so it’s important that we understand its potential value and harm. This way, we can all make more informed decisions about the technology we use and the data it collects. We chose to ground this unfamiliar topic of AI within tattooing – a familiar context for many Knowle Westers. 

We began over at Marked Up Tattoo Studio, which is just across the road from KWMC. We chatted with the tattoo artists there plus BDFI and artist Alice Stewart about how technology is already used in tattooing. This varied widely, from using Facebook to chat to clients to Photoshop to design tattoos. The tattoo artists were clear that they thought robots should never replace humans, but AI could be a useful collaborator – either to help people to decide what tattoo they want or helping with admin and streamlining the initial customer consultation process.   

After, we (KWMC / BDFI / LV / Alice) facilitated a drop-in workshop at Marked Up Tattoo Studio to find out what local people think about AI in relation to tattooing. We created different areas of playful activities to gradually build up to discussing deep topics around AI, including: 

• Tattoo artist Mark chatting about what technology he already uses to create tattoos. 
• A chat with artist Alice Stewart, via Zoom, about her AI Tattoo Parlour project. 
• Playing with an online text-to-image generator, typing in prompts to generate a new tattoo then projecting these images onto the body. 
• A game to explain how AI works using tagging, plus how it can go wrong – for example, confusing a curled-up cat with a croissant! 
• Uploading tattoos to the Knowle West Tattoo Database while exploring data privacy. 

Most people’s responses towards AI within a tattooing context were positive, seeing it as an exciting new creative tool. There was a general agreement that people wanted humans to always be involved in the final stages of the process, but AI could be a useful tool in the early stages to generate an idea. A few people expressed annoyance about repeating data-collection to access websites plus there were fears around data sharing and children being addicted to phones. 

We re-ran this workshop at KWMC in our main studio with a larger group of 15 local people of varying ages and knowledge of AI. For some attendees, this was the first time they’d even heard the term AI. 

Here we had some great group discussions about AI in general, particularly around privacy concerns. There was a general protectiveness towards personal data and suspicion of why it is being collected and how/where it is being used. People came to the consensus that if their data was being shared, they’d want complete clarity about its purpose and some kind of solid value in return. People also raised similar concerns to those in Marked Up Tattoo Studio about feeling addicted to technology and wanting to distance themselves from it.  

This research is the beginning of a wider exploration of data privacy in Knowle West and how we hope to harness the power of AI to benefit our community. 

Special thanks to our collaborators: Bristol Digital Futures Institute (Marisela Gutierrez Lopez and Susan Halford), Alice Stewart, LV (Kieran Billingham) and the community of Knowle West.