Reconstructed Reveries: Ai and The Fabric of Memory

• Prize
  Silver in Special/AI-Generated Images
• Jury Top 5 Selection

  Tomohide Ikeya We have prepared the following critique comments: The work is an extremely contemporary and personal exploration that beautifully overlaps the characteristics of memory and AI. The uncertainty of childhood memory and the ambiguity of AI image generation resonate exquisitely with each other, successfully creating a new form of autobiographical expression. Taking the concrete record of his mother's diary as a starting point, the attempt to fill in the gaps in his memory by visualising it with AI is extremely creative. The images generated are real memories, yet illusory, and have a strange persuasive power to evoke the very ‘memory before memory’. The work is also outstanding in that, against the backdrop of this year's AI boom, it is not merely a technological experiment, but sublimates into a deep contemplation of the nature of human memory and consciousness. It is highly praiseworthy as an ambitious work that reflects the times, showing the potential for new forms of expression that interweave personal stories and technology.

• Photographer
  Xinya Xu
• Photo Date
  2024.04.30

Memory, with its inherent fuzziness, fluidity and reinterpretation, resembles the workings of Text-To-Image AI generators—both capable of producing countless variations and interpretations of a single event. Inspired by Freud's concept of infantile amnesia, which underscores our inability to recall the earliest moments of our lives, this series delves into the mysterious void of pre-verbal childhood. By extracting passages from my mother's diary chronicling my life before my second birthday, I employ generative AI to bridge the gaps in my recollection.