Visions Of Destruction (2023)
The interactive artwork “Visions of Destruction” presents an immersive real-time AI-driven experience that portrays humankind’s devastating impact on terrestrial ecosystems. The viewers’ gazes are seamlessly detected through an eye-tracking system, in the viewed areas unfold captivating exploration animations of the consequences of our actions on the environment. The simple act of observation results in transformations of the AI synthetic landscapes generated using Stable Diffusion.
With each fixed gaze upon the landscapes, the viewers inadvertently contribute to their visual pollution and destruction. However, amidst this sombre reality, a glimmer of hope emerges when users graciously grant the landscapes moments of respite by averting their gaze. It is in these fleeting instances, as indicated by the elapsed time when eye-tracking fails to detect any viewer, that the landscape begins its remarkable journey of regeneration. Through this symbiotic dance between human presence and absence, the landscapes find solace, allowing their inherent beauty to flourish once again. Let us recognize the profound impact of our actions, embracing the responsibility to protect and nurture these precious natural wonders.
Credits:
Idea: Varvara & Mar (Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet)
Technical realization: Mar Canet and Isaac Clarke
About the artist: https://var-mar.info
Article about the piece:
- Canet Sola, M., & Guljajeva, V. (2024, February). Visions Of Destruction: Exploring Human Impact on Nature by Navigating the Latent Space of a Diffusion Model via Gaze. In Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 1-5). https://doi.org/10.1145/3623509.3635319