14 years, 14 photos
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
and the road goes on
This month—14 years ago—I left home in search of...something. I didn't quite know what it was back then, and maybe I still don't. So, I keep going, not so much to find answers but to keep asking questions. And now I'm 14. Fourteen years a nomad. To celebrate the occasion, I'm sharing 14 of my favorite pictures, and the latest news.
can you imagine?
Bits and pieces, this and that, here and there: without captions, these pictures tell completely inconclusive stories, bound more by your imagination than the realities they emerged from. If you want to find out more about them—and maybe get one for your wall—follow each picture to its product description in the shop.
I can't really play favorites with my babies, but if you have one, I'd love to hear from you!
half a million visitors embracing our differences
I feel fortunate that I was selected for this year's Embracing Our Differences exhibition in the US. Seeing my work blown up to billboard size and partake in an important educational mission was an incredible honor. And to learn that 449,982 visitors experienced that exhibition, is a tremendous reward.
lost in latent space
Fontcuberta. Chatonsky. Eldagsen. Astray.
After Boris Eldagsen and I replied to Joan Fontcuberta’s musings on “algorithmic photography” with an article published by PetaPixel, Gregory Chatonsky replied to us with a theory that expands on latent space. Now it’s our turn again. Gloves are off, but it’s all in good fun. Whether you create or consume images, this is for you:
With implications reaching far and wide across society, I hope you will find a moment to explore our debate, but here are some snippets to get you started:
Convenience is a loan. You pay it with interest, little by little, conveniently oblivious to the sum total. And AI’s interest rate is staggering, a bit of convenience at an exorbitant price.
The veracity of an image is still within reach and we have to keep it there if we want to stay in touch with reality. Traceability is not an abstract pursuit but an administrative obligation shared between the machine’s manufacturers and the content factories that employ it. MADE IN CPU.
While we finally begin to grasp how expansive and expensive our social media presence is—as those billionaires sell bits and pieces of us to the highest bidder—the notion that ChatGPT knows us more intimately than our mom or spouse is still buffering.
read more snippets
LLMs are not plugged into the real world like a camera is, and that connection is meaningful. Channeling light, the camera becomes a magical tool to slice time.
For all its poetic potential to manifest fragrances of the subconscious reminiscent of human inclinations, AI’s connection with us is indirect, via an outside world it cannot touch, that only we can touch to tell the machine about it.
Doubt is a means, not an end; the beginning of an investigation, not its conclusion. If neither veracity nor falsity follow it—either because we accept undecidability or because we overwhelm our institutions with AI slop—doubt becomes noise and we get stuck in limbo.
We provided the biased training data when we uploaded but the most likable versions of the world and ourselves, polished superficiality and cosmetic beauty, a mainstream of generic and vain misrepresentations that don’t reflect reality’s perfect imperfections.
As for the power structures holding these machines hostage: we, the people inhabiting democracies, bring a lot of bargaining power to the negotiations—our merged monies and political influence. Without us as clients, corporations are penniless; and without us as voters, governments are powerless.
Conveniences are obvious, but their consequences subtle—short-term comforts with long-term impacts: create a cute little flyer today, spiral inside a perpetual tornamitsunado of AI slop tomorrow.
latest content
Check out some of my latest words, lines, passages, and essays for thoughts and feelings orbiting matters of life and love.
So long,
Miles
