The absurdity of AI text-to-image outputs is used as a metaphor for making sense of our pasts as teens in Future Pasts, Past Futures, while simultaneously hypothesizing adolescence in the future. As a teenager, nothing makes sense, and everything feels exaggerated and extreme. Expectations are heightened, thanks to hormone changes and a lack of life's lessons to draw from. These experiences are depicted using AI text-to-image tools. Language has meaning and value, and it carries implications that are understood differently by each individual.
The work features popular adolescent cultural traditions like prom, summers at county fairs, joyrides, house parties, summers poolside, family vacations, and skate parks with a reverent nostalgia that, in connection with AI, feels almost like last night's dream. As time passes and memories fade, technology both helps us recall and forget our pasts more swiftly. This series attempts to comprehend the perspectives of adolescent absurdities through AI wonders about teenagers of the future.
Future Pasts, Past Futures is part of the exhibition RECOLLECTION. AI AND MEMORY presented by EXPANDED.ART in collaboration with The NFT Gallery at their galleries in New York and London, 11 April – 13 May 2023.
To collect the work on secondary, please visit OpenSea.