Unreliable Memories
From the catalog
Text by exhibition curator José Alberto Ferreira:
Lev Manovich is one of the most influential figures in digital art and culture. As a professor, theorist and historian, he also asserts his positions and exposes his (and our) challenges as an artist. In "Unreliable Memories," Manovich presents works created using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, alongside his original drawings, never before exhibited. The forms (and concerns) of our time are addressed by someone who is intimately familiar with them and who has made significant contributions to their theoretical and critical understanding. Of the seven series of images included in the exhibition, six illustrate the processes involved in the functioning of the AI, which responds to user requests by accessing a vast database of images and information from art history. This generative process uses hundreds or thousands of elements in distinct, unique and often surprising ways. It is not a mechanical process, as the artist must carefully craft his "request" and select the responses that best reflect his vision.
Manovich’s own creative process is even more elaborate. He typically includes a variety of personal and art-historical images, along with a text message as input to the AI, to more precisely control the aesthetics of the results, allowing the AI to generate more surprising results. From thousands of results, he selects only a small number and then refines each image in photo-editing software, often over months. In several of the series presented here, the author’s perspective derives from subtle connections to his biography. Born in Russia in 1960, he presents a very eloquent and also tragic reading of the reality and culture of his country as a series of “unreliable memories”.