2024
created during my masters at École NAD-UQAC, with the collaboration of Louis-Philippe Rondeau (Patenteux; below is his own documentation of the project on his website)
Ad Absurdum is meant to interrogate the necessity and to ridicule by showing the superfluity of such powerful tools by a simple installation.
the physical side of the installation consists of the pairing of a webcam and of a medium-sized screen, effectively creating a “digital mirror”, in front of which is placed a red button.
this alternative image is actually the “image variation” response from OpenAI’s API.
in essence, the snapshot taken by the installation’s webcam is sent to the image-to-image model, which reproduces the elements it identified in the image to form a new one.
the project questions the relevance of the tools made available by the “AI industry” by subversion:
by using the “uncanny valley” effect it produces in the user (which occurs naturally when confronted with an imperfect imitation of oneself), it provokes an unease in the spectator and hopefully triggers some critical thinking about the form that some of the solutions presented by AI companies take on.
in this context, the use of AI is part of the active existence of the piece, not simply assisting in its production.
2024
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