SEARCH HISTORY
2023
Fragments of art history and contemporary news photographs are remixed into hybrids that blur epochs and aesthetics
In Search History, I turn to artificial intelligence as a collaborator, using generative systems to mine the vast archive of art history. By aligning datasets of scanned paintings, sculptures, and photographs with machine learning tools, I attempt to reanimate centuries of artistic styles, collapsing historical periods into uncanny hybrids that hover between the familiar and the unfamiliar.
The works appear painterly or sculptural, yet their source is entirely photographic: AI recombines the visual DNA of countless images into new forms that speak to contemporary themes and anxieties. In doing so, I extend my long-standing engagement with appropriation and image systems, treating art history itself as raw material.
I’ve been making work with AI for a few years now, most visibly with The Fertile Image and Influenzer.
Lately, I’ve been using AI systems to revisit art history and apply styles and compositions from the past thousand years to contemporary themes and issues. These works, though painterly and sculptural in appearance, are all essentially photographic. Photographs are the source material that informs the entire process behind these AI tools . The alignment of these archives with generative AI systems means that with this series, art history itself becomes the material from which new art is made to reflect on the present.
In my work, I’ve always enjoyed switching styles and viewpoints from one project to the next and have never been interested in developing a singular, signature aesthetic style. AI systems work by harvesting extensive historical archives to create new visions and this process is strongly aligned to my own creative process. The result is neither photography nor painting or sculpture, but something in-between.
Lately, I’ve been using AI systems to revisit art history and apply styles and compositions from the past thousand years to contemporary themes and issues. These works, though painterly and sculptural in appearance, are all essentially photographic. Photographs are the source material that informs the entire process behind these AI tools . The alignment of these archives with generative AI systems means that with this series, art history itself becomes the material from which new art is made to reflect on the present.
In my work, I’ve always enjoyed switching styles and viewpoints from one project to the next and have never been interested in developing a singular, signature aesthetic style. AI systems work by harvesting extensive historical archives to create new visions and this process is strongly aligned to my own creative process. The result is neither photography nor painting or sculpture, but something in-between.
