Songs of ghosts
Pictures from the opening and from the finissage by Uwe von Loh, Klara Hartmann and Krystian Kolbe.
Limited edition prints and overview: Songs of ghosts, prints
YouTube Trailer: Songs of ghosts, trailer
Exhibition: Sept. 02 – 20, 2023: Songs of ghosts, solo exhibition
About this body of work
Beginning to experiment with AI, my first attempts were very discouraging. I stopped the process for a few months and tried to learn more about it. Things began to get interesting when I finally began to upload my own images and combined them with the prompts*. And not long after that, I realized it could take my creations way beyond what I thought possible.
To make it very clear, I do not see the pictures in this series as photographs. There is nothing natural in these creations, although my input made them go in that direction. They may look real but don’t get tricked; all they do is simulate the real world as good as possible. Sometimes they made me feel intrigued and sometimes frightened, but either way, walking this path is very exciting.
One of the crucial ideas behind this series is “The Verfremdungseffekt” (alienation effect) of Bertolt Brecht. He first used the term in his essay “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting”, published in 1936, in which he described it as performing “in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to occur on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience’s subconscious”. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distancing_effect).
I try to use this in a subtle way, but the more pictures you will see of this series, the more this idea will get dominant.
* an instruction or question given to a computer in natural language (Source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/)
My personal experience with AI:
The pictures of this series all inherit the DNA of my real-life photographs.
Without that, they would be meaningless to me.
The process of getting there is quite different, but there are striking similarities:
Sometimes, I feel like I am in the darkroom again, just like in the old and analogue days.
I vividly remember how magical it was to see one after the other image slowly appear in the development bath.
And quite like that, the picture feedback from the AI always slowly begins to take shape.
There is nothing cold or machine-like.
In fact, it is 1968 again, and the androids do dream of electric sheep…
Songs of ghosts, prints
Prints of these pictures in a limited edition of 20 each are available at my exhibitions or directly here.
Print size and quality:
Archival print on museum-quality fine art paper with a white frame
Printed on Hahnemühle PhotoRag, 308 g
Measures: 50cm x 30cm
Visible photo area: 45cm x 25cm
Click any image for bigger size gallery
