Shadow Creatures.: From Spirit Images to the Ghosts of the Algorithm, De Mutiis, Grünenfelder

From nineteenth-century spirit images to AI cryptids, Shadow Creatures explores the specters embedded in algorithmic pictures.

Specters hang-out digital pictures: algorithmic creatures loom in photorealistic video video games, cryptids nest in datasets, and AI prompts carry ghostly figures to the scene. Shadow Creatures traces a protracted arc from the spirit images of the nineteenth century to at present’s algorithmic phantoms as an instance how pictures can conjure up beings that inhabit our private, social, and political unconscious. It redirects our gaze from the guarantees of sunshine to the shadows during which the spectral and nonhuman inform our views on pictures and our shared visions.

Featuring work by artists akin to Cihad Caner, Sheung Yiu, and Nina Davies, this catalogue illuminates how algorithmic processes engender distinctive ghostly apparitions that blur the boundaries between code, creativeness, and projection. The ebook design extends this exploration, participating with the stress between what seems actual and what stays unseen. With essays by curators Rea Grünenfelder and Marco De Mutiis, in addition to by Matteo Bittanti, Deirdre de la Cruz, Dortje Fink, Arianna Forte, Bogna Konior, Sophie Publig and Mikkel Rørbo, Johny Pitts, Shih-Lun Chang, Shannon Taggart, Jon Uriarte, Günseli Yalcinkaya, and Sheung Yiu.