On 17 April 2023, Boris Eldagsen won the Sony World Photography Award in London. However, instead of accepting the award, he confessed that the image submitted to the competition was made using various generative artificial intelligence systems. The story captured the global imagination, and AI-generated imagery was propelled into the public consciousness: How does traditional photography differ from AI imagery? Where does the artist’s hand come into play, and what rules apply with regard to intellectual property?
POST-PHOTOGRAPHY : THE UNCANNY VALLEY opened a year to the day since Eldagsen refused the award, pairing the artist with two emerging AI practitioners, Nouf Aljowaysir and Ben Millar Cole.
Highlighting the technology’s rapid evolution, the exhibition demonstrates the collaborative process between artist and machine, exploring subjects such as heritage, identity and the uncanny. The exhibition also critically engages with AI-generated images, which are often met with suspicion. ‘Uncanny Valley’ is central to this – a term coined in the 1970s to refer to a sense of unease experienced when facing technology that closely resembles humans, but isn’t convincingly realistic.
Generated from traditional photographs, the images in this exhibition are at once familiar and unfamiliar. Distorted elements present themselves, creating an unsettling effect, which pushes them beyond the confines of traditional photography – and into the realm of post-photography.
‘Post-Photography : The Uncanny Valley’
15 HATTON STREET, NW8 8PL, LISSON GROVE, LONDON
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