A Human Laboratory and the Radical Image

Delivered as part of the Documentary Futures Symposium at the European Centre for Documentary at the University of South Wales. In the second edition of the Documentary Futures international symposium, we address the state of the image and the rapidly altering landscape of photographic practice in the wake of the explosion and commercialisation of Artificial Intelligence. We explore what role artists, theorists and documentarians can assume within or against the architecture of machine learning at this critical juncture in human-machine development whilst exploring the implications of big data on photography and our shifting relationship to reality as affected by technical imagery.

The second aspect and panel of the symposium will seek to understand how we use documentary's own shortcomings and blind spots in a world where fact rather than truth is debated. We discuss what methods are used by practitioners and researchers to embrace the faults, power dynamics and fictions inherent in their medium(s). In doing so we can look to engage in documentary's speculative potential and function in imagining hopeful futures.

Recording: https://themothhouse.com/2023/05/08/documentary-futures-online-symposium-redefining-technical-images-and-speculative-blind-spots/