Possible starting points for new project
Focus: Seeding Image Transfiguration  Multimodal generative AI

1) Phantasmagoria
New project
Phantasmagoria was the first illusion to use a screen as its medium. A magical stage show – also known as a haunted house experience from the 17th century. Often, this took place in abandoned buildings with smoke and magic lanterns. Through a screen (the source of the illusion), the use of light and shadows would create a sequence of dream-like images. It simulated an encounter with a ghost or soul. The main goal was entertainment by scaring people by calling phantoms.

These illusions were designed as an antidote to cruelty and supernatural events, intended to reveal the mechanisms behind these experiences to the viewer.

Possible directions
Encountering a soul of a generative AI system.
Transfiguration of the single image through centuries by multimodal creation. Focus on: Anthropomorphism Supernatural Enlightened in alchemy: Turn Lead into Gold - now the images are the gold
Simmularity in theater, mysticism and AI development
Combine it with moments in history that technology has haunted our houses (from a queer feminist perspective): coming of the magic lantern in the house, picture tube in the living room and the PC (with no discreet function) in domestic life, now the animist smart home.
Use low tech magic laterns and chromatropes as medium to tell this high tech story.
Fun fact: dutch invention



"The imaginary machine constantly creates, by allowing it to use space for the traces, desires, reverberation, and resonances of a much larger history of imagination."
- Erik Davis on a Brief History of lmaginal Machines


Possible form

1 dramatically draped main projection (phantasmagoric decor). Make a clear distinction in front and behind the screen. Here the visitor influences the Phantasmagoria.

Linked to the main screen
3 magic lanterns (seeding magic lanterns) that start to display visions in the space when you interact with the main screen.
Constant moving simple led spots with big as ghost and phantoms players in AI development.
Haunting soundscape, linked to all objects in the space.
Extra: stack of ‘obsolete’ slides that showcase the research: history of technological illusions, imagination and optical toys.



Seeding Phantasmagoric Decor

Seeding Magic Lanterns 
Possible ingredients: mini beamer connected to raspberry pi in cyber sculpture. Perhaps the cyberscupture contains reactive sensors/lights/audio.

The First Female Travelling Lanternist in Paris

When magic lanterns became more compact they were used for street entertainment. This is me in the future! 

Technical Drawing

1) Drawing of the magic lantern
2) One of the first technical drawings by Ismaël Al Jazari (1206). This clock showcases the fusion of cultures within the Islamic empire.
3) Anatomy of an AI System by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler. This diagram reveals the networks that expose the birth, life, and death of a smart Amazon Echo speaker.

What would a technical drawing of a new age magic lantern look like that displays the cultural social religious context of generative AI?

Reference: use of language when the PC entered our domestic life in the 80s




2) Experiment: Seeding Sculptures


New project | Happy Incidents 

Seeding alternatives bodies of (existing) sculptures that have shaped how we look at bodies through a digital lens, incoorporate endless variations by visitor input and generative AI

In depth: Seeding Venus
Seeding Petrification

Interaction
Visitors can scan and add body parts and flesh copies to the database, that will manipulate and seed more variations of the sculptures
By selecting prompts visitors can influence the characteristics of the to be generated alterning versions of existing works. They can see their addition to the database.






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