Research/Practice 04: How machine learning and computer vision generate images.

Trevor Paglen’s ongoing series Adversarially Evolved Hallucinations reveals the phantasmal and hallucinatory character of computer-generated images, through mining the latent space of computer vision.
Although often considered to be a fault or a glitch in the system, the event of hallucination is central to the models of image production generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

About the authors

In the conversation included in this volume, Paglen discusses how we can think from within these opaque structures and, in turn, questions the frequently inflated claims made on behalf of automated image-production systems. In an accompanying essay, Anthony Downey explores the uncanny realm of algorithmically induced images and proposes that AI, through its generative modelling of the world, invariably estranges us from the present and the future.

Anthony Downey is Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa (Birmingham City University) and the editor for the Research/Practice series of Sternberg.
Trevor Paglen (born 1974) is an American multidisciplinary artist known for blending image-making, sculpture, journalism, and engineering into his work. Notably, Paglen launched an artwork into orbit and contributed to the Oscar-winning film Citizenfour. He holds degrees from UC Berkeley and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Softcover, published in 2024, 160 pages (57 ill.)