In Conversation with Camila Galaz
By Natasha Chuk, November 5, 2026
Installation view of Camila Galaz: Diskette/Rosette, July 25-October 23, 2026, at 2nd Story. Photo courtesy of the artist and 2nd Story.
In the early 1980s, as personal computing was emerging, IBM turned to an unlikely figure in Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp to introduce its new product to American households and workplaces. In a series of print ads, the beloved character, recreated by actor Billy Scudder, helped cast the desktop computer as an approachable companion. Even more curiously, the ads also featured a red rose. What might this combination of sign systems reveal about how technology is made familiar, desirable, and human-like?
In Diskette/Rosette, New York City-based Chilean-Australian artist-researcher Camila Galaz takes this unexpected advertising motif as the starting point for an expansive creative investigation into the marketing history of personal computing and the emotional, social, and intimate relationships we build with our personal devices. By extracting and reworking details from vintage ads, she gives new meaning to familiar language and symbols, inviting us to reconsider the cultural assumptions and desires attached to how technologies are marketed. On the occasion of her solo exhibition at 2nd Story, an art and curatorial space in Lexington, KY, we discuss the research behind Diskette/Rosette, the historical and gendered narratives embedded in technology advertising, and how the language and visual strategies once used to sell personal computers are resurfacing in the promotion of newer technologies, like today’s AI tools.
NC: I’d like to begin with the exhibition’s historical foundations. Diskette/Rosette takes up IBM’s 1980s personal computer advertising campaign as a way of thinking about the cultural history of computing. I’m interested in the premise that making a computer “personal” involves more than making it accessible to individual users — it also requires giving the machine a recognizable place in everyday life. What first drew you to this particular campaign, and what did your research reveal about the cultural work these advertisements were doing? How did this history become the foundation for the exhibition?
CG: I’d been spending quite a bit of time in computer magazines from the 80s for other projects, and I kept seeing roses in many of the ads. I guess I originally thought that perhaps it was just a certain aesthetic convention of the era, but I started to find more and more of them and then eventually hundreds, and I figured there was probably something else going on. The roses are usually in very similar configurations: next to the computer in a small white or crystal vase, and the rose with a single stem and one to three flowers. When I encounter something like that, something kind of curious, I am very drawn to find out the context. So, by moving backward through the 80s, a year at a time, I realized that it all came back to a campaign for the IBM personal computer from the early 80s, featuring Charlie Chaplin, an actor who portrayed him, named Billy Scudder, and the slogan “A Tool for Modern Times”. Knowing that they were using Chaplin as a humanizing force to sell this new technology helped me to think about the rose as representing what it means to be in relationship with computers, and the framing of a relationship with technology as similar to pre-existing forms of human relationships. Moving from this into the present, I began thinking about our relationship with technology today. With LLMs and AI Chatbots, we’re having a similar relationship with a computer again, seeing it as an external being with which we relate.
Installation view of Camila Galaz: Diskette/Rosette, July 25-October 23, 2026, at 2nd Story. Photo courtesy of the artist and 2nd Story.
NC: Looking at the IBM ads in your research, some of their strategies do feel similar to today’s AI marketing. I think your video, The Pleasure of Networking, captures this idea. How do you see the IBM campaign anticipating some of the ways technology is marketed today? What might be the AI tool equivalent of the rose or Chaplin’s Tramp?
CG: When I started to isolate the elements of the ads, the symbols and language, it became very clear to me that there was a continuation or connection to how technology is advertised today. Particularly with the language - the promises they make to try to convince us to get inside. Wanting to get our work done “in a third of the usual time”, or to be “richer, faster” as the 80s ads put it, is all language that is used in how we are being sold AI today. On one hand, I think that seeing these same promises 40 years later could be a demonstration that they were never fulfilled. But on the other hand, perhaps they were, and actually, the pace of work and lack of downtime are only escalating. Quoting the people running the campaign, the goal of Chaplin’s Tramp and the rose in the original IBM ads was to humanize the technology and create a sense of innocence. I do think we see that in other forms now in these AI ads: friendly language, such as Claude’s “Let’s Noodle,” warm palettes, rounded shapes, and human names.
In The Pleasure of Networking, I read the advertising texts as a voice-over, with my voice morphing in and out of various generated voices. I see it as similar to the Greek sirens, luring sailors in with their song and promises of truth and wisdom only to reveal their monstrous selves. The promises of technology appeal to core desires and insecurities, but we need to understand if the goal is actually to fulfill those promises, or if it is part of a larger objective.
NC: The rose begins as a recognizable symbol but, given your extraordinary attention to detail, it acquires an individual identity through your paintings. Does the rose also take on an object that seems to hold a particular presence or power beyond its representational meaning? What might these alternative meanings reveal about the ways symbols, like language itself, can carry and reproduce gendered meanings?
CG: The symbol of the Rose has held a lot of different meanings over a very long period of time. For this project, I wanted to be very specific about what the rose may represent in this context, which ended up being two major things. One, that it represents a relationship with something, the giving of the rose from one to another; and two, that these ads are often portraying the computer in a persona of the feminized labor that it was ultimately being advertised to replace. One of the main sections of the exhibition is a series of paintings of each rose, as precisely from the ads as I could, including blurring or issues from the scans, the passage of time, and the reproduction of the image. Spending so much time with them, I did start to feel like they had their own kind of characters in a way. I even started to notice when the IBM ads had been shot on the same day, because the roses were the same, but they might just have been turned around a little bit. I started to think about the life of these roses, and there’s something really intimate in paying attention to these flowers that are long gone, long dead now, but really taking care to understand every petal.
NC: Could you say more about the gendered labor that this campaign overlooks? How does that connect to the audience it was designed to reach? I’m thinking here about the parallels with video game advertising from the same period, and how those campaigns mobilized gendered assumptions about technology and its users.
CG: Computers were definitely marketed around different uses connected to ideas of gender. Often it’s the little boy playing the computer game, or the businessman in the office, while the mother may write up menus or manage the household. What struck me in this particular set of ads I collected about IBM was that women appear mostly as demonstrations of the types of work a computer could do. That is, the work of a secretary or assistant, and the computers are positioned to resemble that relationship. This is not new; for instance, there are occasional references in these ads to the female labor of switchboard operators, a job which eventually shifted to automation. And projecting into the current day, it is the same with AI technologies replacing work that is largely the domain of an executive or personal assistant.
Some of this may be aspirational; now everyone can have the privilege of an executive assistant. However, it also shows how the people who work in these positions are viewed in the workplace over time: as a friendly face and a humanizing force, but ultimately replaceable. Whereas the reality is that these positions are complex, structurally important, and require a large degree of emotional intelligence.
NC: These are weighty subjects! But there’s also humor and playfulness throughout the exhibition. I wonder if this stems from your decision to create work in different forms, each offering a distinct way to engage with the historical material. How did you arrive at these different works, and how did each reflect your approach to the research?
CG: I wanted each section of the show to have a slightly different perspective on the research. I didn’t want it to seem like I was pushing one particular idea around this history, but rather to allow viewers to connect at different levels. The first works I made for this show were the rose portraits, which I wanted to feel very personal. In these paintings, I also use text from the ads, writing by hand and carving into the wood panels. I wanted it to feel like coming across an inscription in a secondhand book or initials carved into a tree. As you move to the video (viewing language) and then the interactive website (playing with the language yourself to create unique prints), I wanted to encourage a shifting of relation to the ads; if they were designed to be humanizing, intimate, and personal, what are the ways that we can unpack them through that lens and find something real?
NC: Where do you see this project going from here? Do you hope to expand the research or make new artworks? I’m also curious about the performance lecture, which presents a different tone from the other aspects of the project. How do you understand its relationship to the exhibition?
CG: As a research-based artist, I’m always trying to find a balance between the art and the research. Usually, I like to have one element of a project that does the deepest dive into the research — such as an essay or a talk — however, I always want the artworks to stand for themselves as well. I think each piece in the show can be approached for what it is, but together invite a deeper perspective on the topic. The performance lecture walks through my research process and has its own core idea that complements the rest of the show. While making the exhibition, I had the pleasure of connecting with Billy Scudder, the actor who played Chaplin in the original IBM ads. Being able to hear directly from him about his experience participating in the campaign informed how I structured the lecture performance. The Chaplin character was a humanizing force in these ads, so speaking to the actor behind the character who played a role within a role ultimately helped me to think through the complexity of the roles we play within this technological world, which is continuing into further projects.
Diskette/Rosette was on view at 2nd Story from July 25 to October 23, 2026.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Camila Galaz, Everyone’s Data (2026). Digital print, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist and 2nd Story.