Tezos

IUsedToHaveDemons.pdf

Creator

tz1P52JV8zXxapGL7z3t7Wzyf7gcAiJuAkJe

Description

about the 𝘐 𝘜𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘛𝘰 𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘴 & 𝘚𝘰 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 series :: {2022/23} :: @annaxmalina :: annamalina.com ----- "I used to have demons is a series of hand-manipulated inkjet print collages. The images are Dall·E variations of my previous series Pantyheads, which consists of nine polaroid self-portraits for which I altered the look of my head & face with a variety of tights. These portraits served me as image inputs for Dall·E to create new variations without further text input. I instantly fell in love with the new images’ weird realism. It almost felt like this way of image creation could solve my problem of having the urge to work with portraiture but having no models beside myself, a problem that had already inspired the Pantyheads series. Of course it is difficult to feel a durable attachment to something that is created as easily as this, so the elation didn’t last. The images did not feel like they really belonged to me, which made me wonder what I could do to change that. Inspired by The Tickle Lit third issue’s theme of Aberrations, for which I created this series initially, I thought of Chromatic aberrations and — craving to make something colorful after a while of making mostly black & white work — I used color pencils to make marks on inkjet prints of the raw Dall·E outputs. These marks are meant as meditations on and are guided by the portraits themselves, born from a wish to look closer at the faces, to feel their peculiarities, to touch their “aberrations”, finding ways to respond to them with my hands. At the end, I also tore away parts of the portraits to invite a bit of chance, to see what would be lost and what would be added. As a last step I then created the So many monsters series by using these new portraits as image inputs again, finding it very intriguing to examine in what ways these combinations of portraits and pencil and tear marks are mixed further. While working on the marked portraits I listened to a youtube playlist of randomly put together favorite music that I collected there over the years. When Annie Lennox’ No More I Love You’s started playing and I listened to the lyrics, I suddenly had the title for this series: I used to have demons. I decided to use the playlist in shuffle mode to find titles for all the marked portraits by taking a line from each song that would play, giving each portrait a loose and random meaning that still has a personal connection for me. I then arranged the lines into a form that might read like a poem to see if that would deepen associations and meanings. To take that approach of a random attribution of meaning — and thereby a potential evocation of affect — further, I also added quotes from two books that I am currently reading in the descriptions of the NFTs on objkt.com. The recent advances of text-to-image AI and especially Dall·E’s very photographic images, and the heated discussions on AI imagery in general, made me think a lot about the status of images and image makers. How does an artwork acquire meaning? What makes it authentic? Can randomly put together parts amount to something that is genuine, personal and affective? As I have been working with collage and found/appropriated footage for a while, the recontextualisation and recombination of things that already exist has already been part of my art making, just like the above questions. Surely, AI deepens them and poses many more. But already familiar media or processes often work in similar ways and raise similar questions, when one stops to look at them for a moment. Song lyrics, for example, can be a loosely compiled text of often basic expressions that might or might not make you cry or burst with joy, depending on what resonance they find within you and your memories. Sounds, no matter if familiar seeming ones from acoustic instruments or weird electronic noises, can cut you deeply — though some people still maintain that music made with machines has no soul. Since I started creating & exploring Dall·E’s photorealistic portraits I have noticed a feeling of unease when looking at the created faces with their expressions and their directed gazes. I find them touching, I feel their gaze weighing, sometimes I feel ashamed that I summoned them; they seem real to me, like momentary manifestations of souls that I have trapped into existence. They feel familiar. <3