A sequence of pieces going back through time exploring lineage, ancestors, history, memory, remembrance, and loss.

It begins in the present day with me, as one piece in a portrait series spanning three generations of women in my family.

1. "Me / 2020"

2. "Mother / 1994"

3. "Grandmother / Before I Even Was on This Earth"

4. "49 Days". When we arrive at my grandmother, we see her recent journey to the afterlife in the video piece <a href="https://www.altsalt.com/movie/49-days/1">49 Days</a>.

5. "The Time Before-" 

The last piece in the series, a generation from a neural network of a Chinese papercut, represents the imperfection of memory & dissolution of generational history, as time inexorably marches on 

I've been thinking about memory, history that is relayed and recounted by family members through the foggy lens peering through generations past. And why I use AI in my work... As an artist using AI, you experience an extreme loss of control when you put several hundred ""representative"" images of a subject or theme into a neural network. 

The process often goes like: You put in what fragments of an idea or theme you can scrape together, something unexpected always comes out of the machine, and you try to piece it all together. Sometimes it makes sense, often it doesn't. 

It's a similar feeling to when you're grasping for a stable story about generations past, and you're left with a feeling of loss and unrecoverable truth.

Generations

A woman with her eyes closed and a contemplative expression

A spectacled woman holding a baby; they are both laughing and happy

A woman's bust from behind, with a tattoo on her upper back

Envisioning an alternative world

Generations

Creators