The international conference Post-photographic Images. Generative Imaging Processes reflects the evolution of the technical image from the photographic to the postphotographic image, which includes digital photographs and AI-generated images. It will focus on a particular aspect of recent image production: the aspect of the generative. Used as an umbrella term, generative refers to a variety of different imaging processes that obviously have an algorithmic or at least rule-based precondition. The conference will explore the various imaging processes both experimentally and in terms of the history of ideas. The most recent and current turn of the generative occurred with open AI, for which the term generative artificial intelligence has become established. Beyond the use of algorithms, generative here refers to a specific moment of image production that goes beyond the simple generation of an image from an existing dataset. It includes instead that the datasets are read out on the basis of machine learning in such a way that entirely new and self-referential images are automatically generated. To date, neither the various generative imaging processes and practices, nor the connotations attached to the concept of the generative as a result, have yet been differentiated and presented in detail. However, this seems to be a prerequisite for individual agency and engagement in both technological and social processes of transformation that are expressed and reinforced through image production and reception. For only a deeper understanding of the algorithmic nature of data mining and processing, model training, statistical probability, pattern recognition and image generation, which are part of the current media conditions of our perception and are involved in the creation of our reality, enables both their appropriation and their critique.
My presentation “From Apparatus of Capture to Generative Models” will take place on Wednesday at 10:30 at HSBI’s Department of Design.
HSBI, Fachbereich Gestaltung
Lampingstraße 3
33615 Bielefeld
Haltestelle
Rudolf-Oetker-Halle
Stadtbahn Linie 4