What is even real and what is artificial?

In the contemporary light, the division between real and artificial loses weight as the concepts become more and more intertwined. In this work, the artist combines the human and generative inputs, in a counterintuitive manner, by allowing AI to design the organic elements and using the human hand to incorporate artificial glitches. What seemingly emerges as natural forms, was imagined solely by GAN, seeing the world through the limited examples through the photographer’s lenses. Artist’s role is also reversed, as their goal is to design the visual destruction process of the organic forms. Glitch is a malfunction of perception, it symbolizes the confusion caused by not being able to comprehend.

The human fascination with metaphysical forces spans many centuries. While Pagan mythology created gods living in deep forests and under-explored territories, nowadays we approach technology with somewhat similar awe, fascination, and fear.

The project has been developed in multiple stages. It started with an inspiration by the Lithuanian landscape and research of the ancient myths and legends. The photography aimed at capturing the mysterious, spanning months and years of different experiences. A custom pre-trained artist’s GAN model was then trained on a collection of several hundred photographs in high resolution. Selected outputs were curated by artist and included as a starting canvas for the next stage. Then, a set of stochastic manipulations were programmed to create alternative narratives through the visual destruction. Fog turns into smoke into burning radioactive forest in an unpredictable manner, guided by the random variables, their boundaries crafted by artist.

Read more on the project website:
ivonatau.com/mythic-latent-glitches

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