Mishka Henner
Visual Artist
Mishka Henner is a visual artist born in Belgium and living in the UK. His varied practice navigates through the digital terrain to focus on key subjects of cultural and geo-political interest. He often produces books, films, photographic, and sculptural works that reflect on cultural and industrial infrastructures in a process involving extensive documentary research combined with the meticulous reconstruction of imagery from materials sourced online.
His work has featured in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris and Centre Pompidou Metz, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, FOAM Amsterdam, and Turner Contemporary, Margate. He holds a Masters degree from Goldsmiths College in London and in 2013, was awarded the Infinity Award for Art by the International Center of Photography. He was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in the same year and in 2014, was on the shortlist for the Prix Pictet for his large-scale works focusing on landscapes carved by the oil and beef industries of America.
https://mishkahenner.com/
Maarten Steenhagen
Philosopher
Maarten Steenhagen is a researcher in the Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University. Prior to coming to Uppsala he worked as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and was a Bye-Fellow of Queens’ College.
His current research focuses on perception and aesthetic value. In particular, he concentrates on the metaphysics and normativity of appearances. He also writes about the role of perceptual media in experience—such as sounds, images, and optical technology. His articles and papers cover the experience of sounds, images, and mirror perception, as well as evaluations of the different theories of perception.
In addition to his work on perception, Steenhagen is interested in philosophical logic and the history of 20th century philosophy, in particular the controversies about philosophical method and the presuppositions and value of analysis in philosophy.
Abstract
The Fertile Image uses artificial intelligence to create an infinite set of photorealistic, visual descendants from two parent images. First premiered at the Free Lunch exhibition at the Jean-Kenta Gallery in Paris, France, in December 2020, the installation presented a different pair of parents with 300 visual descendants in the form of 5x4” prints in glassine envelopes, each week for the 7-week run of the exhibition. These prints were given away to the gallery’s visitors. The artificial intelligence machine learning tools used in this project are called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). These networks compete with each other to produce infinite varieties of unique descendants from two source images. The results unnervingly seem to blend the visions of 20th Century Surrealists with the fantasies and methods of 21st Century computer programmers. These images are simulations of the simulacra and I think of this series as a machine’s attempt to re-present our own representations of the world.
https://mishkahenner.com/The-Fertile-Image
Philosopher’s Comment
Computer art is no longer a thought experiment. It’s everywhere. It’s no surprise to find this technology used by an artist like Henner, who has built up a provocative portfolio of works that are but also are not made by Henner himself. The Fertile Image makes use of GAN software to generate endless series of similar looking images, each time taking some two input images as starting point. The work has the appearance of a 1970s conceptual photography presentation.
But the interesting thing is, these aren’t actual photographs. They merely look like photos. Henner’s ‘fertile’ images subvert the expectations we have of photographic representation. In the descendant images of Parent Set #1, I immediately recognise a type of scene: modern architecture; a deserted house; draperies. Yet as soon as I examine these pictures, their representation falls into incoherence. The details just don’t add up. Walls are wrinkled like curtains, shapes become shadows (and vice versa), and what seemed architectural elements turn out to be mere abstractions. The incoherence of these images is unsettling. When you step back and look at them from a distance they once more appear like ordinary (be it somewhat artsy) Polaroid snaps.
The fact that the ‘fertile’ images are photographic merely at the surface is interesting, but it’s no more than an artifact of the way GAN software works. Although some uses of GAN result in deceptively ‘real’ pictures (thispersondoesnotexist.com is a case in point), the software most commonly gives you something that is, to some extent, garbled. This has become the aesthetic of much of present-day computer art: surrealistic, dreamlike compositions of elements taken from other pictures. (Philosophers have for centuries thought that the human imagination works in this synthesising way as well.)
However, The Fertile Image goes beyond computer art. It merely uses it. We also see the results of choices made by Henner: the grid presentation, the use of tiny archival envelopes, and perhaps which images served as input for the generative algorithm. These aesthetic choices ensure the ‘photographicity’ of the work. They allow us to see these images as art, and read them as a commentary on the aesthetics of art photography, as it became established in the 1970s. With the emergence of ‘artificial photographs’, does art photography still have a future?