Latencies of the statistical image

There is nothing new under the sun, or so the saying goes. AI developers and advocates often beg to differ, presenting Artificial Intelligence as a radically new development poised to affect every aspect of our lives. Yet this video essay by Catalan researcher, professor, and visual artist Roc Albalat suggests otherwise. Albalat traces the aspirations and ambitions of AI back to much older visual technologies.

 

Albalat is a member of Estampa, an artistic collective that approaches modern digital and audiovisual technologies through an archaeological lens. This perspective is evident in this video essay (published in Teknokultura), where he draws on the writings of two 19th-century pioneers of photography, Étienne-Jules Marey and Francis Galton, to shed a light on contemporary developments in AI-generated visuals. The hopes and dreams of Marey and Galton seem strikingly relevant to today’s AI developers. (Whether those dreams have since morphed into nightmares is another question altogether.)

 

The parallels Albalat uncovers are not merely intellectual but profoundly visual. He demonstrates how the photographic experiments of Marey and Galton find remarkable modern-day equivalents in specific AI applications and research. (The side-by-side comparisons featured in the end credits are perhaps the most compelling examples.) This genealogy – a family tree of abstracted and composited images – invites viewers to reflect on the ideologies underpinning these technological pursuits.