Aspen Hochhalter - FUTURE NATURE / CONTENT AWARE

Milliken Art Gallery, Converse University. 2022

FUTURE NATURE / CONTENT AWARE

As we face an uncertain, and certainly unstable, future due to climate change, what will our experience of nature become? Will computers and future AI create nature "experiences" for us? The "Future Nature / Content Aware" series explores how computers, and specifically the Photoshop content aware algorithm, interprets and reconstructs partial panoramic photographs to give us a glimpse into a digital “vision.” These photographs were intentionally taken in such a way to emphasize and exaggerate digital artifacts. In addition, large sections of the panoramics were blank and the computer was tasked to fill in the missing information with its approximation of "nature." The resulting images are composite landscapes of digital fragmentation, disruption, pattern glitches, and digital imperfections created by the computer in attempts to reconstruct the missing content. These are documents of hybrid seeing--a collaborative vision of nature through the photographic lens, with a human at the helm and a computer algorithm completing the picture.

The photographs are printed as 17"x69" banners. The audience is confronted with the large scale photographs that are juxtapositions of familiar "nature" scenes with digitally glitched textures, creating an unsettling experience of constructed, digitized landscapes.