monUMENTAL
AI x Human x XR
MONUMENTAL merges Extended Reality (XR) with AI-generated imagery to create a new photographic medium, and questions how this technology could shape culture and the natural world. As XR becomes mainstream, digital overlays will become integral to our daily snapshots. With additional AI integration, our senses will increasingly be driven by machines. As these machines learn to alter what we see, what could they make us think, feel or do?
“Honestly one of the most creative uses of Gen AI I’ve seen”
- Ramon Issac, Adobe -
For millennia, cultures have built monumental structures to represent themselves. These structures inspire profound, personal experiences that transcend mere aesthetics. Monuments have power. Events in our fiction are synthetic, but the emotional response is real. Resulting belief and behaviour change… the rippling cultural effects are real. AI taps into this powerful phenomenon, crafting Monuments from code instead of metal and stone.
With direct access to our senses through Extended Reality (XR), AI makes us revere synthetic structures, just as much as human-made ones. Some witness the appearance of a Monument. Pilgrimages are made. We study them, photograph them, sell them, forget them. They become part of who were are.
With direct access to our senses through Extended Reality (XR), AI makes us revere synthetic structures, just as much as human-made ones. Some witness the appearance of a Monument. Pilgrimages are made. We study them, photograph them, sell them, forget them. They become part of who were are.
AWARDS
- ND Awards, Honorable Mention | Conceptual, 2024
- Tokyo International Foto Awards, Honorable Mention | Special, 2024
I bring this vision to life by integrating AI and XR technologies. Discussing the concept of monuments with AI, it generates newly imagined structures based on our conversations. I manually place the Monuments into real-world landscapes using XR, then capture the results through still and moving images.
PROCESS