Stephen Bulger Gallery is pleased to present “An Impossible Perspective,” our fourth solo exhibition of work by Sanaz Mazinani. In step with Mazinani’s previous projects on the relationship of photography to perception, media distribution, and consumption, “An Impossible Perspective” is a foray 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’s relationship 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 a complex set of procedures aiming to mimic human intelligence to co-create the resulting artworks. The processes were complicated by focusing on relationships between important words, to investigate the various technologies’ ability to render intelligence. Mazinani worked with ChatGPT-4, DALLE-2, and Midjourney to generate hundreds of images reflecting complex ideas, such as the relationship between humankind and the natural world. Image-sets were then sorted and combined with the artist’s own photographs of plants. Finally, the photographs were sequenced by the newly trained machine learning models to help form the individual artworks. With these AI tools, over 15,000 images were analysed and sorted to create the individual artworks for “An Impossible Perspective,” based on concepts such as Realness, Artificiality, and Truthfulness. Once sequenced and labelled, the printed images were pinned to backing board according to AI sequencing instructions to create collages composed of hundreds of images.

Stephen Bulger Gallery is pleased to present a selection of vintage photographs on display in our Reading Room Gallery from September 9th – 24th.