Artist: Firas Safieddine
Location: Spain
Exhibition duration: 14 days
Series count: 13 unique pieces
Media: Digital painting - Print on Airtex 330 grams
Canvas size: 190 cm x 190 cm
Image Dimensions: 23000 x 23000 pixels
Resolution: 300 dpi

Brief

Background

"Human Assemblages" is a seminal collection of digital paintings that recruits a co-creation process between the artist and generative artificial intelligence algorithms to explore the “inverse uncanny valley”. The project delves into the dichotomy between human perception and machine comprehension, attempting a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which AI constructs composite images of human bodies.

The Inverse Uncanny Valley
The uncanny valley is the perceptual space where humans feel weird, dealing with machines that demonstrate certain human aspects or characteristics. It is a human feeling, once machines trick us into perceiving ourselves in it. How do machines see us? And how do we see machines? The uncanny valley is when we see machines with a hint of our image.

Then, How do we perceive how machines see us? How do we produce and comprehend, the human image of the machinic image of humans?

This artwork dwells on exactly that, the inverse uncanny valley as attempted through the process.

The work unpacks the concept of the "inverse uncanny valley," and offers a provocative examination of how artificial intelligence algorithms shape our perceptions of the body through a series of meticulously crafted prompt variations and pixel augmentation techniques.

With a distinct blend of surrealism and photorealism, the series pushes the boundaries of traditional artistic representation and technological capability. It offers a hauntingly beautiful exploration of the human form and its relationship to the algorithms that are rapidly transforming our world. The resulting works are both hyperrealistic in their attention to detail, yet surreal in their unsettling dreamlike quality, blurring the lines between the real and the imagined.

This is an especially poignant reflection where machines have created possible assemblages of human bodies that both captivate and confound. In this way, "Human Assemblages" stands as a testament to the power of technological innovation to shape our perceptions of reality through the most immediate object - our bodies, and as a thought-provoking meditation on the role of the human body in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Forbidden Prompts
Terms like “Blood, Flesh, Corpse, Surgery, Organs, or Nude” are banned from usage on generative AI platforms such as MidJourney AI, giving the project an edge over what is currently possible, as it utilizes some like nude, organs, flesh, amongst others.