THE ALGONAUTS – REMIX

Mixed Media on archival photographic paper.

THE ALGONAUTS – Artificial vs. Human Intelligence.

“The Algonauts” is a collection of digital, AI-generated portraits of non-existing people “artistically” altered – through a privacy-protection, censorship-assertive act of artistic, human-driven mania – with the addition of a series of graphic masks made out of stylized sets of children’s eyes, generated by the same algorithmic force and specifically tailored by the author as a means of concealing the identity of all portrayed non-existing subjects.

“The Algonauts” aims to symbolically correct and mend the privacy flaw discovered by a team of researchers whose efforts revealed that numerous faces produced by the portrait-generating algorithm bear a striking resemblance to actual people who appear in the training data (the scientific study demonstrates how reversing the algorithm can effectively unmask the real faces the program was based upon, making it possible to expose the identity of those individuals with inevitable nefarious consequences in terms of privacy and safety), and serves as a reminder of how crucial it is to preserve and nourish “human identity” when dealing with AI.

“The Algonauts” series intends to question the controversial idea of the complete replaceability of humans by Artificial Intelligence and suggests a reflection on the necessity to embrace raising awareness, improving the culture, and creating adequate regulation rather than passively demonizing algorithmic technology.
In the era of deep fakes, maybe these portraits of AI-generated people with counterfeit, childish eyes staring at us in a mirror-like dynamic are more accurate than many social profiles of our days.

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