Sanaz Mazinani An Impossible Perspective

Expanding from Mazinani’s previous research on the relationship of photography to perception, media distribution, and consumption, An Impossible Perspective is an investigation into artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. In this work, Mazinani presents imagery of plants as both metaphor and conduit for an artistic speculation on the future of humanity’srelationship to creativity, truth, and labour.

To develop this series, Mazinani devised a unique methodology using a set of AI tools. She worked with computer programmer Millan Singh Khurana to create custom code with an intricate set of procedures aiming to mimic human intelligence to create the resulting artworks. Investigating how these technologies render intelligence, Mazinani worked with DALLE-2 and Midjourney to generate hundreds of images based on ideas such as the relationship between humankind and the natural world. Image-sets including the artist’s own photographs were then sequenced using newly trained machine vision and natural language processing models to analyze the relationships between them. Over 15,000 images were analyzed and sorted to create the individual artworks for An Impossible Perspective, based on concepts such as Realness, Artificiality, and Truthfulness. Once sequenced and labeled, the printed images were pinned to backing-board according to AI sequencing instructions to create collages composed of hundreds of images.