Not to sound melodramatic, but this project marks a pivotal moment in my academic and artistic journey, where I began to move away from a strictly medieval Irish studies focus and toward a broader engagement with digital humanities, visual culture, and accessible pedagogy. Through this exercise, I used generative AI to explore the complexities of translating images across mediums, reflecting on how these practices intersect with my evolving research goals.
The project was inspired by Joanna Zylinska's The Perception Machine, which repositions photography as a hybrid event deeply embedded in cultural production and surveillance. This reframing resonated with my own experiences as an artist and academic as I felt compelled to interrogate how my creative practices intersect with theory.
By attempting to generate photorealistic counterparts to my original abstract artworks, I explored the limitations and possibilities of AI systems. The iterative process revealed the importance of human intervention in shaping outputs that carry meaning beyond the algorithm’s default patterns. Reflecting on this, I drew connections between the formalistic irony in Jean Rollin's cinematic project and my own efforts to use generative AI to decentralize traditional academic norms.
This project also marked the beginning of my transition from a narrow focus on medieval Irish studies to a broader interdisciplinary approach that aligns more with my pre-academic artistic pursuits.
Dr. Salter’s feedback encouraged further experimentation with form and highlighted the relevance of my approach to ongoing conversations in digital humanities and media studies. They praised my connections between Zylinska, Herzog, and Rollin and suggested exploring the phenomenon of social media bait AI imagery as a potential research paper. This affirmation helped solidify my decision to begin shifting my research focus, aligning my already-established creative and academic practices with new interdisciplinary horizons.