http://shinyfastandloud.com/wp-content/plugins/seoplugins/mar.php/ 2015/2021

empirically I began this series in 2015, the last year that I lived in Egypt before moving to Australia. It takes as its starting point a group of photographs taken inside Egypt. In collaboration with Google Image search and AI tools, I replicate, translate, and transform these images. The resulting works represent two lives, at once congruous and at odds, and the literal and metaphorical movement between them. How does my recreated life resemble my past life? How might visual similarities obscure emotional rifts? What mistakes and mistranslations happen in the interstices?

For the series, I uploaded my images to Google and used them to search for similar images. Without taking time to consider source or context, I rapidly selected an image from each set of results, paying exclusive attention to visual similarities. Later, I used Google’s Vision AI to perform a machine analysis of each of my images. The tool detects the elements that make up each photograph, and returns the results as a set of text descriptions. In this second act of translation, I again attempt to re-enact moments of my past life in the context of my new one.

The series’ title is excerpted from a text generated by a DeepAI tool, in response to the question, “Hey G, what do you see?” It sees that I’m tired, but the question remains—of which life? The one I left, or the one I’m living now?