Portraits of Claire Tourneur: Facing into an AI Imaginary
Submission Type
Paper
Start Date/Time (EDT)
20-7-2024 10:30 AM
End Date/Time (EDT)
20-7-2024 11:30 AM
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Abstract
This Individual Talk reflects on continuing creative research in which the author is compiling “portraits of imaginary people,” including Claire Tourneur, one of the principal characters in Wim Wenders’ 1991 feature, Until the End of the World. Claire becomes the first expert user of a visualizing technology that captures moving pictures from her dreams. She becomes addicted to the process, falling into a near-catatonia that literalizes McLuhan’s “Narcissus narcosis.” Claire’s arduous but successful recovery is a main concern for the end of the film.
I will trace resonances between Claire’s addiction and the entrancing mysteries of AI image generation, focusing on certain generated series that show evocative, diachronic patterns: fictional portraits that suggest details of an actual life. I will consider effects of narcotic fascination – digital hallucination as externalized dreamwork -- but also Johanna Zylinska’s speculation that AI art may reveal a “human outside the human,” an intensely provocative insight. I will juxtapose the apotheosis of Wenders’ Claire, who becomes an astronaut scanning the Earth for “pollution crimes,” with the supposed exteriority or alterity offered by AI image models -- an “outside” whose terms need close consideration.
Recommended Citation
Moulthrop, Stuart, "Portraits of Claire Tourneur: Facing into an AI Imaginary" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 18.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/algorithmsandimaginaries/schedule/18
Portraits of Claire Tourneur: Facing into an AI Imaginary
Algorithms & Imaginaries
This Individual Talk reflects on continuing creative research in which the author is compiling “portraits of imaginary people,” including Claire Tourneur, one of the principal characters in Wim Wenders’ 1991 feature, Until the End of the World. Claire becomes the first expert user of a visualizing technology that captures moving pictures from her dreams. She becomes addicted to the process, falling into a near-catatonia that literalizes McLuhan’s “Narcissus narcosis.” Claire’s arduous but successful recovery is a main concern for the end of the film.
I will trace resonances between Claire’s addiction and the entrancing mysteries of AI image generation, focusing on certain generated series that show evocative, diachronic patterns: fictional portraits that suggest details of an actual life. I will consider effects of narcotic fascination – digital hallucination as externalized dreamwork -- but also Johanna Zylinska’s speculation that AI art may reveal a “human outside the human,” an intensely provocative insight. I will juxtapose the apotheosis of Wenders’ Claire, who becomes an astronaut scanning the Earth for “pollution crimes,” with the supposed exteriority or alterity offered by AI image models -- an “outside” whose terms need close consideration.
Bio
Stuart Moulthrop is a digital artist, writer, and critic known for work with hypertext fiction in the 80s and 90s and more recently with Twine. Lately he has been thinking and making with AI image models. He served on the ELO board from 2008-2018 and hosted the 2014 conference. Moulthrop is Distinguished Professor (and beginning in July, Chair) of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he is co-PI of the Digital Cultures Collaboratory. His books, both collaborations, include _Traversals_, with Dene Grigar (2017), and _Twining_, with Anastasia Salter (2021). Salter and Moulthrop are co-editors of "Electronic Communities of Making," a book series from Amherst College Press.