“Understanding Machine-Made Images from Photography to Generative AI: Collaborative Exercise in Response to Flusser, Azoulay, and Manovich” is a guest lecture and seminar that I was invited to deliver at the Art Academy of Latvia, January 26, 2024.
Background image above and below: details from Unknown photographer, [Occupational portrait of a woman working at a sewing machine] Daguerreotype, ca. 1853. Library of Congress collection, https://www.loc.gov/resource/ds.04496/
Together with doctoral students at the Art Academy of Latvia, we read and discussed excerpts from the writings of Vilém Flusser, Ariella Azoulay, and Lev Manovich. At the end of the seminar, the students collaboratively wrote a speculative manifesto “What is the role of photography and AI-generated images today, if today is 2124?”
Among other things, we also discussed the concepts of technical images and machine-made images as well as guessed whether a given image is a photograph or AI-generated image.
Francis Grice, photographer. [Unidentified man and woman, seated, facing front] Daguerreotype, ca. 1855. Library of Congress collection, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004664531/