Generative Extrapolations
Photography + Generative Ai + Digital Painting
Beginning with one or more photographs, and using generative AI to reveal an imagined context, Generative Extrapolations examine the dialogue between human and machine visualization. The iterative process of gradual enlargement leads to the construction of images many times their original size that reveal new imaginary landscapes and spaces.
Below, left to right: A Dis/Appearance, From An Abandoned Work, I, Witness, All Frequencies Are Loud With Signals of Despair, Unconscious Architecture, A Construction Sight, All Frequencies Are Loud With Signals of Despair, A Construction Sight, I Keep Asking Myself Where I Am (I), I Keep Asking Myself Where I Am (II).
VIDEO ENLARGEMENTS AND DETAILS
But Still The I Persists
Photography + Ai
“I've always been interested in making resolution independent photographs. Unlike a painting, which has theoretically infinite resolution, a photograph eventually runs out of pixels. A photograph that never runs out of pixels, as you enlarge it, would be almost as resolution independent as optical reality itself.
Resolution independence can either be achieved by increasing camera megapixels, or eventually by using AI to expand into unseen, unphotographed territory — a mysterious place we discover beyond the original image. These generative extrapolations are, in that sense, the record of my journey to find what lies beyond the photographic frame.
In this piece, as the generated imagery loses resolution, creating the sense of an environment in blur and motion, the eye is drawn back to the stillness of the portrait at the picture's core.”
From An Abandoned Work
Photography + Digital Painting
“I had been thinking about ways of combining photography, painting, and generative AI when I recently found myself driving through Los Angeles Chinatown — a square mile that, pre-pandemic, vibrated with activity. The dim sum palaces stood empty, half the stores were shuttered, malls were abandoned, and windows were tagged with graffiti. After an hour of exploring the area on foot, I began taking pictures of my reflection in the plate glass windows of an empty restaurant on Hill Street.”
Self-portrait and street photography combined with generative extrapolation and digital painting, From An Abandoned Work I, 82” x 42”, which takes its title from a short work by Samuel Beckett, invites the viewer to explore the relationship between reflection and observation, presence and absence. By contrast, From An Abandoned Work II, 80 x 38”, begins with a different photograph from the same sequence, but explores the space behind the reflected surface as extended landscape.
