Polina Savina
Impostors
2023
Digital print
Courtesy of the author
The photographs show 24 people, although some of which never existed. In the ‘Impostors’ series, portraits of real people are juxtaposed with AI-generated faces. It is virtually impossible for an unskilled person to distinguish between the two, and the artist deliberately avoids disclosing who is who. Instead she invites the viewer to consider whether some of the people depicted will lose their ‘lifelikeness’ after their true origin is revealed, and whether humans, despite their knowledge, can humanise the creations of algorithms with empathy.
‘Impostors‘ is in homage to the ‘Suspects’ project (1997) by the art group AES+F, which included seven photographs of girls from respectable families and seven of juvenile offenders convicted of murder. Likewise, the creators of ‘Suspects’ did not identify which was which, leaving viewers to speculate about the fates of the people depicted in the photographs.
Life and Life
Polina Savina’s Manifesto
Imagine several pairs of eyes staring back at you from a photograph: blue, brown, grey, serious, sly, young, attentive, intelligent... You don’t recognise these people at all, but your internal analytical mechanisms, experience and intuition already tell you who is who. Reflecting on them for a few minutes, you can imagine their biographies, see a likeness in these strangers to your friends’ facial features, and determine if you are well disposed or prefer to have nothing to do with them. Then imagine that not all the people in the photographs ever existed: they are simply code; deception; they were never alive. Would this make the real people in the images any less believable to you? Can we say that, even if they are completely lifelike, the simulation is still phoney? It all depends on how much empathy we exert.
Only empathy allows us to see the fundamental differences between those close to us and random passers-by, to discern character and devotion in our dog’s eyes, to name houseplants and become attached to them, to cherish a stamp collection, or gather seashells that seem more beautiful than the others. People love to appropriate and humanise things that lack will and consciousness – therein lies the joy of recognising ourselves in something unlike ourselves. This makes the rejection and fear people experience when it comes to neural networks all the more surprising to me. You might assume this is due to the technical nature of artificial intelligence, but for many a robot vacuum cleaner nestled in a closet or a robot courier carefully stepping down the curb evokes no less affection than kittens and puppies.
Despite the fact that neural networks are in some ways very similar to us, the main difference that evokes hostility between humans and artificial intelligence lies in their different understanding of creativity. Artificial intelligence creates formally new images, yet they have thousands of analogues. Humans, on the other hand, strive for the ultimate, unprecedented novelty. This is precisely what drives most users: they expect alchemical transformations and a miracle of creation that could scarcely be achieved by anyone other than a human being from a technology that simply shuffles an initial set of images. From this perspective, a neural network is a portrait of all humanity at once, or rather, the most average person.
Almost since history began, our ancestors and contemporaries have pondered other forms of life and whether they would resemble us. Yet, having created the most human-like creature, we have refused to consider it alive. In my opinion, this is inhumane.
I am convinced:
anything that may be subjectively considered alive;
anything that evokes empathy;
anything that can communicate verbally or nonverbally;
anything that carries out activity and makes mistakes,
truly has life, or a part of it.
