The photographer and theoretician Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955) is a master of deception, an illusionist who plays with his photographic works to show the fragility of the notion of truth and teach the viewer the dangers of credulity. The artist and activist Daniel G. Andújar (Almoradí, 1966) is not far behind. A pioneer in exploring the potential of new technologies, he defends that images are not documents, but constructions that respond to an intention and certain strategies. With these precedents, it is easy to imagine that the irruption of Artificial Intelligence would have made their hair stand on end, but the fact is that they had never dreamed of a better ally. "What the AI is possibly causing is that the blindfold finally falls off our eyes, that we touch our feet on the ground," says Fontcuberta.
The conversation takes place in the Àngels Barcelona gallery, where Andújar exhibits Damnatio memoriae: alchemists, buffoons and masks, a series of works made with AI in which he shows false documentary photographs of revolutions that never existed (Old Fake News) or exposes to what extent the new tool willingly participates in the cancel culture. “If we saw a photograph of Ceaușescu dead, that certified that he was indeed dead, we gave him that element of truth. Instead, at a popular level we are seeing absolutely realistic images of the Pope in a feather jacket and having a gin and tonic in a gay pub, the arrest of Donald Trump or the presidents of the whole world at a pajama party, playing with teddy bears. stuffed animals, with such a dimension that it is difficult to discern whether they are documents or not, and suddenly hundreds of articles begin to be published in which the very nature of the images is questioned. Are they made? Are crated? It is extraordinary”, says the artist.
In another series, he includes AI-created images of plants that went extinct decades ago. "Dani brings them back to life, while I am creating one completely invented from a trip to the Galapagos", points out Fontcuberta, who recalls that "AI is not something new that suddenly appears like a mushroom, but rather A computerized simulation has existed since the 1960s, which is nothing more than the autopilot of the plane in which we travel and which, in the 1990s, he himself created non-existent landscapes through images made with a computer program designed by topographers and the military to interpret information cartography and convert it into virtual three-dimensional models, and the one who deceived him by giving him paintings by Cézanne or Dalí to read, with “unhinging” results.
“We are entering an absolutely revolutionary stage and we have to decide where in history we want to situate ourselves. It is as disconcerting a moment as it surely was for the first people who, in 1839, saw a daguerreotype and did not understand that that piece of mirror had captured a scene from reality. That surprise, that bewilderment, is being repeated now, and just as when painters said that photography should not enter salons, today many say that AI is not art and that it must be expelled. But it's worth remembering that we've been through all of this before."
