Lucida

The diploma project “Lucida” by Can Denzer is a film that shows a surreal view of a world that emerges from a conversation between John Berger and an AI.

Lucida speaks for both AI image “reproduction” tools like Dall-e or Stable diffusion, which have been “trained” on millions of images, including the Painting of Tradition that Berger takes into question. As well as Text generating algorithms like GPT-3, that have been fed with endless texts, including the ones Berger wrote, or the ones that have been written about him. The Images them selves making up the Film were generated directly from the dialogue at the core of the film. Together making up a World where the original and the reproduction confide and blur together.

In the 1972 BBC Series “Ways of seeing” Berger uncovered an underlying truth about the reproductions that a camera provides. By using it to showcase both its revolutionary potential for gaining new understanding of art, as well as as its tendency to reproduce antiquated imagery of oppression found in European oil painting.

Trying to ask similar questions about the future of Images, Berger’s monologue from Ways of Seeing now becomes part of a conversation bridging 50 years, by being replied to by an AI called Lucida. Knowing the context of the conversation, Open AI’s GPT-3 was used to generate replies to…