Synthographies. The Educational Challenges Posed By AI Generated Images

In the essay “The reconfigured eye” (1992), Mitchell described the transition into the post-photographic era, retouching is entirely consistent with professional photographic procedures, and manipulating visual content is just as necessary as controlling the audio information in recorded music. With the advent of digital images, the decrease in the documental value of the images went to the advantage of other values, such as the association of the act of photography with connectivity and communication (Fontcuberta, 2015). Firstly, this contribution addresses how post-photography substituted the value of memory with hyper-visibility and the idea that photography is no longer the process of “writing with light” associated with documentary and conviction aspects but rather a universal language everyone uses daily. Secondly, it tackles the emergence of synthographies, images generated through softwares that involve linguistic prompts, processed by encoded semantic systems able to capture compositional aspects of arbitrary language text inputs (Saharia 2022). Thirdly, this contribution argues that the decrease in the documental value of the images went to the advantage of other values, such as the association of the act of photography with connectivity and communication. If the advent of digital photography re-defined the image – which moved from a permanently marked surface to a transient surface (Meo 2018) – the possibility to easily create synthographies almost indistinguishable from real photographies might separate the interaction between the detective and the depictive functions to the advantage of the latter. A particularly problematic aspect is that in the case of synthographies generated with text-to-image technologies, as opposed to depictive forms such as painting and sculpture, it is very hard to distinguish between an image that performs a detective function and one that does not perform such a function. Furthermore, we argue that the broader process of erosion of what remained of the visual reliability and documental value of the images is redefining the status of images and the relationship we establish with them. Finally, this contribution presents and discusses recent experiences of image education aimed at sustaining visual competencies and critical reflection on the impact of text to image technologies.