Final Project - Julia Rose Camus

AI Photography - Visual Poetry (Synthesis and Translation)

For this project, I was inspired by the ways in which artists are able to interact with code and machinery as a means of producing new multimodal and collaborative forms of art. As a photographer, there is a strange sense of marvel and also resentment when it comes to considering the ability of AI's to digitally generate the kinds of images it takes artists hours to produce. My way of dealing with this tension has been through a kind of collaborative effort with AI. I will often provide it with an image I have shot, see what the AI has produced, and then digitally paint over that result. Other times, I will feed one same image through the same AI multiple times, and then paint the result onto a physical canvas. I find this kind of artistic collaboration to be innovative and exciting, while also still feeling like I am rooted in my craft as an artist. We are working together to produce something new, without any limitations. 

This kind of dialectical exchange with AI has helped me contemplate new theoretical inquiries into computation, notably through the ideas of visual translation and semiotics. I have been curious to consider all the ways in which I can creatively challenge an AI in order to push the boundaries of "visual translation." In this sample of my project, I used the poem "The Fire" from Louise Glück's collection The House on Marshland (1975). I gave the AI each stanza to interpret, and made variations until the poetic sentiment of each image felt write, and digitally wrote each stanza on its corresponding image. 

This project has felt exhilarating in many ways, and I hope to be able to visually translate many poems in this way, whether in the work of a single author, or by following a variety of poetic themes across the works of multiple authors.

You can find bigger versions of these images here:

https://www.juliarosecamus.com/photography-portfolio#/pageai/