Installation of "Characters", a series of CGI photographs based on AI portraits from artist Dagmar Keller
Characters, installation view
from the series "Characters", by artist Dagmar Keller. CGI photographs on baryta paper based on AI portraits
from the series Characters, #74
from the series "Characters", by artist Dagmar Keller. CGI photographs on baryta paper based on AI portraits
from the series Characters, #698
from the series "Characters", by artist Dagmar Keller. CGI photographs on baryta paper based on AI portraits
from the series Characters, #74.2
from the series "Characters", by artist Dagmar Keller. CGI photographs on baryta paper based on AI portraits
Characters, #698.2, installation view

Dagmar Keller
Characters
3D Renderings on baryta paper webs (2m x 1,27m), 2021

Subsequent to my series „dear to me“, where I was interested in the shifting of boundaries between public and private space through digital technology, I was looking for a way to create a kind of portrait out of data traces that we all leave behind on the internet every day.

While researching, I came across completely AI generated „portraits“. The AI network had been trained with a large dataset of photographic „headshots“ (-so basically with our data traces) and now generates strikingly realistic simulations of photographic portraits.

I wondered how I could photograph these people, who don’t exist, myself. So I ended up creating 3-D avatars on the basis of the AI portraits. I could then stage and photograph the avatars in virtual space according to my ideas. Finally, I exposed the virtual images on analogue b/w film material and printed them in the darkroom on large baryt paper webs.