“People take photos of each other to prove that they really exist” sang the Goldene Zitronen (German Punk band) in 1994. Today, photos have lost credibility because they can be manipulated very easily.
And yet – our relationship to our own image is ambivalent: selfies bear witness to the fact that we were at grandma’s birthday, and at the same time we can manipulate our portrait photo beyond recognition with a single click. The technical possibilities are endless and are becoming more and more perfect thanks to AI-supported applications.
In this work, we are confronted with an old photo that has been animated with the help of artificial intelligence. The girl in the photo seems alive. Do we feel closer to her? What becomes of faulty memory when it gives way to artificial vividness? Doesn’t this illusion rather contribute to forgetting the last vestige of the real human being? And would “Paula” have liked what we do with her memory?
Music: AI-generated
A survey is part of this work:
Would you consider bringing a photo of a deceased loved one to “life” using an AI application? Yes? / No?
“Paula’s” real portrait photo can be found in the work Below the Surface (Book Object).
