REMEMBERING THE FUTURE

  • Dates
    2023 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Topics Editorial, Fine Art, Landscape, Portrait, Social Issues

Remembering the Future is a photographic series exploring time's fluidity by merging past, present, and future, using generative AI, Mars landscapes, and handmade collage. It questions identity, AI embodiment, and humanity's future.

If all time already exists, then so does the future. Remembering the Future is a photographic series engaging with the fluidity of time and memory. By collapsing the boundaries between past, present, and future, the work invites viewers to consider how we construct narratives about who we are and who we might become. It resides between reality and imagination, suggesting that memory is not merely a record of what has been but a speculative tool for navigating what will be.

Our fictions shape the future. The ongoing series includes work from my residency at the Mars Desert Research Station, where analog astronauts blend science with storytelling, sketching early outlines of humanity's interplanetary future. The first person to step on Mars could be a child today, their path shaped by these visionary narratives.

In this project I use generative AI and handmade collages to collapse time. I merge Mars-like landscapes with NASA images from real Mars and space, and I craft imaginary monuments to human stories carried to Mars.

To expand the project, I am currently “collaborating” with an animatronic humanoid robot to explore narratives around robotics, AI, genetic engineering, and the merging of humans and machines, while revisiting earlier hominid splits. In this work, I am finding that the boundaries of the self — of gender, and identity — become increasingly tenuous in a future world in which AI moves towards embodiment, a physicality likely to be characterized by extreme interchangeability.

As AI becomes embodied, it raises profound questions about what it means to be human in a world where machines are not just tools but companions in shaping our identities. This emerging physicality of AI challenges our sense of self and hints at a future where humanity's understanding of existence itself might evolve — redefining the contours of memory, identity, and the narratives that bind us across time.

Remembering the Future suggests that time is cyclical, with moments and stories continuously overlapping, with photographs serving as the scaffolding of memory. In this layered interplay of real and imagined recollections, Remembering the Future considers how we navigate the fluid boundaries of time and selfhood.

© Kris Davidson - Analog astronaut on EVA at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.
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Analog astronaut on EVA at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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Handmade collage combining photographs of Mars-on-Earth with images from real Mars (sourced from NASA’s public domain archive).

© Kris Davidson - Analog astronaut simulating a medical emergency at the Mars Desert Research Station.
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Analog astronaut simulating a medical emergency at the Mars Desert Research Station.

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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Handmade collage of a starscape captured by the Hubble telescope with a biology experiment at the Mars Desert Research Station.

© Kris Davidson - Head of an animatronic robot.
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Head of an animatronic robot.

© Kris Davidson - Child playing dress-up as a future human/posthuman being.
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Child playing dress-up as a future human/posthuman being.

© Kris Davidson - Large handmade collage depicting an imaginary monument to an analog astronaut's memories and stories on imaginary Mars.
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Large handmade collage depicting an imaginary monument to an analog astronaut's memories and stories on imaginary Mars.

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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Detail of the large handmade collage above depicting an imaginary monument to an analog astronaut's memories and stories on imaginary Mars.

© Kris Davidson - The Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.
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The Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.

© Kris Davidson - Snapshot of the Pyramids at Giza in a window of the Mars Desert Research Station.
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Snapshot of the Pyramids at Giza in a window of the Mars Desert Research Station.

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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Large-scale handmade collage depicting two analog astronauts at the Mars Desert Research Station with reproductions of their personal snapshots collaged onto their clothing.

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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Large-scale handmade collage depicting an imaginary monument to two analog astronauts' memories and stories on imaginary Mars.

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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RealDoll animatronic sex robot with head detached. Note: The head and body are real, and the backdrop desert scene is partially real and partially photoshopped.

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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Generative AI used to create robots on an existing image of a robotic rover at the Mars Desert Research Station (this is a work in progress — I intend to work with this further in a large-scale collage capacity).

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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Handmade collage using a Hubble-captured starscape and an image of a robotics engineer holding a rover arm at the Mars Desert Research Station.

© Kris Davidson - Photograph of a projection of Earth scenery on in interior walls of the Science Dome at the Mars Desert Research Station.
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Photograph of a projection of Earth scenery on in interior walls of the Science Dome at the Mars Desert Research Station.

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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Crew biologist at the Mars Desert Research Station in the lab greenhouse working with a spirulina stimulant she designed to encourage edible plant growth in Martian soil.

© Kris Davidson - Handmade collage using a Hubble-captured starscape and an image of the airlock door at the Mars Desert Research Station.
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Handmade collage using a Hubble-captured starscape and an image of the airlock door at the Mars Desert Research Station.

© Kris Davidson - Analog astronauts on EVA at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.
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Analog astronauts on EVA at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.

© Kris Davidson - Image from the REMEMBERING THE FUTURE photography project
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Handmade collage combining photographs of Mars-on-Earth with images from real Mars (sourced from NASA’s public domain archive).