Fossils of the Future is a fully analog translation of digital images. These images are generated with AI by me or generated by strangers and found by me. What does photography mean in a time when everyone can instantly create whatever image they desire?
In this project, pixels become tactile surfaces through the careful labor of different techniques: shooting, developing, printing, molding. What is generated so fast and endless reproducible is transformed into fragile, unique objects that carry the visible traces of hands-on processes.
I look for contradictions, polarities and frictions in time, materials, objectivity, truthfulness and ownership. Will these manual and material techniques bring digital surfaces to life?
136 x104 cm baryta prints
Fossils of the Future
Large baryta prints showing synthetic fossils.
For these big prints I projected self-generated images with a beamer onto light-sensitive paper. There’s a glitch in time that arises when digital pixels become visible on an analog, hand-printed images.
Baryta paper is traditionally used in analog photographic printing and is associated with classical photography. It is a highly delicate material that demands great care and patience to achieve the desired outcome. Since a beamer has no shutter speed, the exposure must be done manually, making each print unique.
As these synthetic fossils lack an inherent size, their physical dimensions are the result of the manual, material process used to realize them..
42 sheet film negatives
Family Tree
A lightbox containing 42 analog sheet film positive negatives (4×5 inches). Shell-like shapes generated by myself using AI, then rephotographed with a large format camera and manually developed by myself. Grouped as a real family tree of a nonexistent life form.
Working with AI image generation raises complex questions. While you may be the one prompting and shaping these images, you are not their sole owner. Any image produced by AI can be accessed and downloaded by anyone. In my own explorations, I came across countless creations made by others. These images appeared briefly, only to vanish when I refreshed the page. This speed of production made me want to collect and archive them.
Among these images, I discovered shell-like figures that strongly resembled the fossils I had been generating myself. I wanted to bring them into the physical world without altering their form. Together with my brother, who is a technical engineering student in Rotterdam, I developed a method to materialize them through 3D printing and vacuum forming.
47 x 33 cm plastic sheet with imprint
Imprints
After turning the virtual surface into a tangible object we created a cast, so the form can generate multiple copies, similar to how a negative functions in analog photography. In the vacuum-forming process, a heated plastic plate is pressed tightly against the 3D print.
During this process, the heat caused the paint of the 3D model to loosen, leaving unpredictable traces. As a result, each imprint became a unique cast.
