Gallery Entry
Avatar's dream #73
By KyoungSoo Kim · KR
Avatar’s Dream is a photographic work that begins with a simple question: what happens when a fictional being created by humans begins to have its own consciousness and dreams? I have long explored the boundary between reality and imagination through figures, constructed sets, light painting, and photographic techniques. In this work, I introduced generative AI into that process, but rather than using AI to create the final photograph, I used it to construct a reality within the photograph. The avatar begins as a physical figure that I photographed in a real space. From this photographic material, I created an imagined world with generative AI. I then printed the resulting image and physically installed it as part of a photographic set. Finally, I photographed the physical figure in front of this AI-generated world using my own camera and light-painting process. The result creates a reversal of the usual relationship between reality and the virtual. The avatar, although a fictional being, physically exists within the photograph. The reality that it encounters, however, exists as an image created by AI. What appears to be a virtual being is therefore made physical, while what appears to be reality is revealed to be artificial. Through this reversal, Avatar’s Dream explores a contemporary world in which the boundary between the real and the artificial is becoming increasingly uncertain. The work is not intended simply to demonstrate what AI can generate. Instead, I use AI as one element within a photographic process that I have developed over time. Ultimately, the work asks: if a being created by humans could begin to think and dream for itself, how would we distinguish between the human and the non-human?