The Astra Syzygy Codex

In response to the pandemic’s upheaval, an age gripped by twin specters—boredom and terror— The Astra Syzygy Codex provided solace with the belief that science fiction, transports us from the Ho-hum, offers escapism and reflects our collective fears.

Finding inspiration from the 1800s Great Moon Hoax, The Codex weaves a myth around the disappearance of hypothetical planets like Vulcan, X, and Tyche. The Codex defies a singular narrative forming a surreal cosmos that shifts and blends multiple perspectives and techniques. I found myself akin to a translator transcribing these alien transmissions.

I_$ Store Dystopia uses multi-exposures to create futuristic dioramas from $ store trinkets. The goal was to use simple shapes to tell complex narratives.

II_Aura Embracing irregularities and accidents in the cyanotype process, these images evoke grainy space transmissions, like an alien probe transmitting snapshots of extraterrestrial pictographs.

III_Celestial Hieroglyphs These photos echo the visual feel of the Arecibo Messages, similar to mysterious coded systems, Data-turned-binary, Yet, these images are created from a child’s toy—a conduit for creating graphic symbols that resemble celestial hieroglyphs.

This project reshapes perception. It unearths hidden symbols in everyday objects and creates
folktales of the future.

Find out more: 

Website: www.tkopix.com

Instagram: @tkopix

A true story

H.C. Andersen: “Anything you look at can become an adventure, and anything you touch can be made into a story!”

In a complex world that every day is becoming more complicated, the tendency to take refuge in details could be a symptom of being overwhelmed. Within a photographic rectangle, we have the opportunity to invent a new reality full of imagination, questions, messages, and auto fictional narratives.

The exhibited photos are a view of my photo experiment on social media “Eine wahre Geschichte” (A true story). 

Uploading a photograph to social media platforms every day is part of everyday cultural practice for many people. It is rare to discover images that will be remembered. My intention is to invite the viewer to take a closer look, to invent their own personal story about the pictures, and to decelerate a medium that is dominated by superficiality and fast consumption.

I am thrilled that, curiously, nobody ever asked about the “true story” behind the pictures. So, an algorithmically controlled marketplace becomes a place of exchange.

Find out more: 

Instagram: @conceptualartbysusan

Message

Due to the effects of global warming, unprecedented forest fires have been raging all over the world.

The daily global news on the environment such as climate change makes us realise that the crisis is much closer to us than we thought.

Something different is starting to unfold. To puzzle pieces that once nicely fitted together are now falling out, and could it be that the earth is sending a message to us, humans?

The project is a series of photographs that visualize what I felt was the message from the earth due to global warming.

Find out more:

Website: tetsuokashiwada.com
Instagram: @tetsuokashiwada

Reality Change

Migration is the enduring narrative of humanity, from nomadic tribes on, or driven by wars, environmental disasters, or social upheaval, Man has always been on the move. Within a few generations in most families, there’s a pivotal journey that reshapes destinies. For instance, my maternal grandfather, a German Jew, made the voyage to Colombia at the onset of Nazism. On my paternal side, the family had to relocate several times during Colombia’s turbulent “La Violencia” era.

‘Reality Change’ pays tribute to this migratory spirit, with a focus on the Cuban Diaspora, prominent in Miami, the place I migrated to. In 2022, a record 200,000 Cubans arrived in the USA, with many risking their lives on homemade boats to reach Florida’s shores. Upon arrival, they rush to find their contacts, leaving the boats ashore for a day or two before the US Coast Guard tows and dismantles them. I embarked on a mission to document and preserve these transient yet life-altering artefacts.

This project honours the intertwined human stories within these boats, recognizing their significance as tangible symbols of hope amid adversity. It underscores their importance in the local community and in the broader context of global migration. The project stands as testament to the ingenuity and determination required to transform one’s reality.

Complementing the photographic prints, the project features an Augmented Reality interaction, allowing viewers to explore and discover intricate details of the vessels in 3D.

Find out more: 

Website: www.bogotadc.tv

Instagram: @felipeaguilarart

 

 

Ai portrayal project –/imagine

Portraits by Amit Lennon and an Artificial Intelligence engine. 

This project explores the idea of imagination as used in Ai imagery and highlights the system’s inbuilt bias.

The imagery generated by the Ai makes assumptions and corrections based on its data set – which is retouched, enhanced, mostly western, and weighted towards repeated cliches. It struggles with ethnicity, and gravitates to rigid formats, such as actors’ photos.

When presented next to a studio portrait of a real person, with unique features, it exposes the possible future idea of beauty, reality and visual truth that an Ai may /imagine. These portrait pairings are a studio portrait of a real person, next to an Ai generated image. The starting point for the Ai was the real person’s biometric data, the three key face recognition data points – 

Distance between the eyes 

Distance from the eyes to the tip of the nose 

Width of the mouth. 

The rest of the image is generated based on text prompts, which include age, profession, location, and ethnic descent. The image created was based on what the AI thinks those words mean visually.  Portrayal – ‘The way that someone or something is described or represented in an artistic work’

Find out more: 

Website: amitlennon.com

Instagram: @amitlennon

Amsterdam Nights 

Roaming the city in the afterhours. Appreciating Amsterdam’s gleaming lights, gradient violet hues, its beaming aquatint iridescence. Meeting drill rappers and police officers alike, the night is not without adventure.

All photographs were taken where I live, contrasting the photographs I showed at Rotterdam Photo 22, which were taken on my trip around the world: ‘oneworld’.

The world around me suffices.

All photography handheld, uncropped, unedited; all about that initial feel.

Find out more: 

Website: www.sjoerdvalks.com

Future Paradise & Apocalypse Dreams

Future Paradise & Apocalypse Dreams is an ongoing photo-collage and photo-manipulation project, which explores visual imagination, memories and dreams with a utopic/apocalyptic lens.

Will mixes a broad range of locations and settings together to mimic the mind’s natural pattern of blending and altering visual memories when dreaming. The result is a series of “dreamed landscapes”: surreal artworks created out of shots taken over the last seven years on 35mm. By using exclusively his own photos the project functions as a personal exploration into visual memory, while scientific understandings of imagination and dreams remain limited.

Each artwork may feature a combination of three broad themes, but usually has a specific emphasis.

Dream Logic takes inspiration from how the sleeping mind will recreate different settings from memories, mixing the look of one place with the feelings of another, but refashions them in unreal yet convincing ways.

Paradises From the Future is a utopic imagining of the world, blending positive aspects of civilization with the grand serenity of nature, hinting at post-apocalyptic paradise. 

Apocalypse Dreams is informed by the suggestion that: if the end of the world came, it would probably look pretty. These emphasise togetherness and beauty in the face of destruction.

Find out more: 

Website: willvickers.art

Instagram: @the_will_vic

 

Concept of Wabi-sabi

Experimenting with the Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi, the photographic eye crystallizes decaying objects, weathered surfaces, or aging landscapes serendipitously found on the streets of Tokyo to capture fleeting moments and the beauty of imperfection. In photographs, this can be achieved through the use of minimalist compositions and a restrained color palette; the textures, patterns, and unique character that emerge from weathered surfaces, rust, or peeling paint evoke a sense of appreciation for the ephemeral nature of life, capturing decay, the passage of time, and a sense of impermanence. By removing unnecessary elements, the images embody the essence of the subject and convey a sense of tranquility to the viewer. 

The oeuvre is not about achieving perfection; but celebrating the beauty found in imperfection, impermanence, and the simplicity of life, searching for small details, mundane objects, or overlooked scenes that possess a certain charm or uniqueness. By applying these principles to street photography in Tokyo, I am able to create images that convey the essence of wabi-sabi and tell stories of the unique aesthetics that lurk throughout the city of Tokyo.

 

Non-lieux Non-StoP

Subway and train stations are places of passage rooted in the way of life of the contemporary metropolis, where repetition makes some tasks nearly automatic, and the pace is so fast that it almost alienates people from their surroundings. In the dominant paradigm, it would be ideal if it were non-stop.

If we ignore the vicinity, we don’t notice the people around us or what impact our actions have on them. We don’t develop a sense of belonging or even community… a place that could enhance unlikely encounters, coincidences, or opportunities becomes a non-liex.

Thus, we temporarily become shadows of what we could be. This series questions the perpetuation of routine through dynamic scenes, rich in movement and potential tension, agents of change prevented from exercising their capacity due to immobility, continually repeating patterns and gestures.

Rewinding the film while exposed to light forces a connection between elements that would otherwise be isolated and separated by the frames. The result is a single image, where 12 to 36 exposures were usually expected, representing the reverberations of waiting and acting, imagining a world where repetition is evident to the point where the need for change becomes visually difficult to ignore.

Find out more: 

Instagram: @7170_barrios

The Transparency Photography  

‘The Transparency Photography’ investigates concepts within the realm of photography by dissecting and fragmenting them, and then reassembling the pieces. This series draws inspiration from an observation of the world outside a window – where the horizon extends as far as the eye can see. The external scenery  at that moment coincided across different times and spaces with the historical first photograph, ‘View from the Window at Le Gras.’ 

Initially, photography struggled to be recognizable due to technological limitations, unable to objectively present the seen objects clearly. The lens could not replicate and reproduce what was seen before the eyes; instead, it transformed the physical light into the photographic light’s contours, leaving an impression of elements within photography and the medium. As technology evolved, breaking the inherent flaws within the medium, an intuitive freedom emerged in representing images. The interaction between us and the images became more agile. This shift gave new meaning to the forms of representation, preserving, in a different way, the once indiscernible entities within photography. 

I use ‘transparency’ as a metaphor to signify the less-representation of photography generated in the process, rejecting narrative-driven photography. I aim to assert a proposition: to concretize the challenges of observing photography, leading to a lesser representation of it. This series accentuates the internal rhythm of images and sensory experiences, fostering a continuous confrontation between the surface of the image and the process of observation.

Find out more: 

Website: wuyumo.net

Instagram: @wuyuumo