Everything artificial intelligence “knows” is based on the data it was fed with. But what it does with it is at least partially out of our control. How should we respond to that?

Starting from the question how image making has changed over the past years, I experimented with AI – initially to generate fictional still life photographs from the past.

Amazed by the resulting images that showed indefinable objects that seem completely detached from time and space, detached from our reality, I went on.

Some of the pictured objects look a little familiar but we cannot really specify and name them. Even though these images are based only on my words and on numerous photographs of real things, we lack the words to translate the images back into our language properly. We are only able to paraphrase them, to say e.g. “This thing looks like X paired with Y mixed with Z ...”, although neither X nor Y nor Z may necessarily be among the words that I had used in my prompt for the AI to generate the subject.

Fictional Still Lifes
2023
Edition of 10 + 1AP
Image size: 30 cm x 30 cm. Paper size: 33 cm x 33 cm
Archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle Baryta FB