Legacy – (portraits of the greats)

Jon Carapiet

The first time I saw AI used to re-animate photographs of long-dead relatives I experienced a psychic shock.

Seeing dead people ‘alive’ – animated by an algorithm, triggered a sense of dread that somehow the mythology about photography ‘capturing your soul’ was not so outlandish after all. 

The limited range of facial movements applied by AI to the still image conjured up impressions of the dead brought back to life being aware and confused at their revitalisation; half-smiling as if to please the viewer but lost in a nightmarish spiritual no-mans land – a digital eternal void.

It invites the sensation of a future time…

I got over it, kind of. The shock remains visceral to this day but it inspired the work in Legacy.

The AI software designed for reanimation of the dead is instead used to shift forward in time – to de-animate the living. It invites the sensation of a future time, looking back, contemplating the legacy of the celebrated greats of our time.  

Using AI to re-cycle images fabricates moments in time that undermine the supremacy of the technology itself to re-assert what is uniquely human.

…monument-alism as seen in public portraits of grandiose political leaders…

The works are stills selected from multiple cycled AI-animated clips.

Early on I envisaged presenting them as moving-images on large digital screens in a gallery setting. This initial strategy was to play off the sense of monumentalism as seen in public portraits of grandiose political leaders in authoritarian countries.

It is the powerful authoritarian voice manifest in today’s digital billboards and portrayed in the dystopian future of Blade Runner and by Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984.

Evolving the concept

I have animated scores of dead people from across history. (The AI recognises paintings of Henry VIII and Jesus, and the statue of Nefertiti and can revive them all. The technology struggles to recognise a face if the photo is of a Maori moko facial tatoo which it cannot bring back to life).
The myriad of short clips exist on my computer and are fascinating in their own right.

But superficial fascination is not my intent. And those people are all dead.
The work in Legacy resolved itself by being forced to be edited and presented as stills, rather than as moving images. I was entering an online photo competition. The requirements allowed just 10 still images. I had to decide exactly what this work is ‘about’.

…the portraits in Legacy reimagine the relationship of subject and viewer into a sublime timeless dream.

So what is it about?

Legacy explores the conventions of portraiture, the gaze and photography’s long association with death.
AI re-animation of old photographs of ancestors seem to resurrect the dead with human gestures and expressions that destabalise time and upset our sense of reality.
That sense of reality includes the emerging dominance of super-rich technocrats, the aspirations for eternal life subsumed in a narcissistic global culture, and species-extinction climate change. These risk becoming our collective inter-generational legacy.

Each subject is famous and has made an impact in the world. They are seen to have gone inside, inviting accusation, valorisation or compassion from the viewer who can consider the humanity of the subject, immune from the gaze reflected back. In the tradition of ‘memento mori’ and the grandiose portraits mentioned above, the portraits in Legacy reimagine the relationship of subject and viewer into a sublime timeless dream. 

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.” Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi – 13th century