Temporal Misunderstanding

"Temporal Misunderstanding" combines 1920s-30s Venice photos by my grandfather with AI-generated expansions. The AI "reimagines" the unseen, contrasting tangible memories and exploring the partiality of memory and photography's evolving role in realilty

"Temporal Misunderstanding" is a project that blends personal memories with contemporary technology, combining photographs of Venice from the 1920s and 1930s, taken by my grandfather, with artificial intelligence to expand the boundaries of the visible. The AI attempts to "reconstruct" a past it never experienced, creating an "artificial expansion" that reflects both the theme of memory and the mutable nature of reality.

A key aspect of this work is the contrast between the tangible memory of the historical photographs, which carry real stories, and the lack of memory in AI. While the original images preserve moments from the past, AI-generated reconstructions are without roots, disconnected from any lived experience. This contrast highlights the tension between memory and its absence, between what was and what is imagined.

Each image overlays the original photograph with a landscape "imagined" by AI, blending past and present but never perfectly aligning. The errors in AI's interpretations symbolize the partiality of memory itself, as our minds also reprocess, omit, and reinvent details.

"Temporal Misunderstanding" challenges the traditional notion of photography as a "true" representation of reality, revealing how memory, like AI, is a partial and often distorted reflection of the past. The project invites viewers to navigate the space between memory and imagination, questioning how we construct and manipulate memories.