A conversation between Grégory Chatonsky, Christian Joschke and Antonio Somaini
How can we explain the changes that artificial intelligence is currently bringing about in the imaging field? What new types of composite images are produced by digital tools? This conversation between Grégory Chatonsky, Christian Joschke and Antonio Somaini opens up research opportunities by attempting to include these changes in the long history of images made of images. Although the images generated by artificial intelligence (AI) may remind us of principles observed in the past in composite photography, combination printings or photomontage, they deviate from these principles through their inductive and statistical functioning. In addition, the operation of software based on deep learning contributes to producing a ‘latent space’, a virtual space which accumulates all the images of the past, present and future in the form of calculations. Lastly, the overall relationship to photographic realism is modified, opening the way for what Grégory Chatonsky called ‘disrealism’.
Grégory Chatonsky, Preform Latent Space : 37e0dcc969ea32920fe5c8dabaccdd4d, 2021, bruit visuel généré par un réseau de neurones antérieur à l’apparition de l’image indicielle. Version modifiée de StyleGAN 2. © Grégory Chatonsky
After completing his studies in philosophy and hypermedia at ENSBA, Grégory Chatonsky developed a practice of net art while working at Incident.net in the 1990s. In 2002, he started focusing on the topic of extinction. In 2008, he started working with artificial intelligence (AI), which he renamed ‘artificial imagination’, and attempted to blur the distinction between human faculties and technical capacities. He was a teacher at Le Fresnoy, UQAM, an artist-researcher at ENS Ulm and currently teaches at Artec. Antonio Somaini is professor of theory of cinema, media and visual culture at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University and a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His main publications include: Culture visuelle. Images, regards, médias, dispositifs (with A. Pinotti, 2022), Ejzenštejn. Il cinema, le arti, il montaggio (2011), Repenser le médium. Art contemporain et cinéma (with L. Dryansky et R. Venturi, 2022) and La haute et la basse définition des images. Photographie, cinéma, art contemporain, culture visuelle (with F. Casetti, 2021).
Keywords: artificial intelligence, digital media, machine learning, completion, upscaling
Citation: Grégory Chatonsky, Christian Joschke, Antonio Somaini, « Disréalismes. Une conversation entre Grégory Chatonsky, Christian Joschke et Antonio Somaini », Transbordeur. Photographie histoire société, no. 7, 2023, pp. 98-109.