About

Clint Enns’s AI-generated images reveal and embrace the imperfections of the algorithms used to generate them.

With playful prompts that are often contradictory and self-referential, such as “a woman giving birth to a photo of a woman giving birth,” Enns attempts to depict the impossible: “images that have never existed before and may never exist in reality.” The resulting images are hallucinatory and often disorienting depictions of where the algorithm breaks down.

As a further play on this idea, Enns uses the aesthetics of early black-and-white film photography to represent these fault lines in the images through a lens that is both nostalgic and contemporary.

Enns is drawn to the element of surprise that occurs when an image is generated using text-to-image models, which he refers to as the “art lottery”, and the possibilities of accidentally creating works that are different, and perhaps, beyond one’s intentions and capabilities.

 Artist Statement

Completing the life cycle of digital photos by image dumping digital assemblages generated from detritus scraped from the world’s largest cultural trash can: the Internet.

The AI-generated images that I am drawn to exist between the horrific and the uncanny, and follow in the tradition of found vernacular photography.

BIO

Clint Enns is an artist, filmmaker, curator, and writer currently residing in Winnipeg, Canada.

Enns’ experimental films and video art have been exhibited in numerous galleries, festivals, and venues around the world. His work often explores themes such as technology, popular culture, and the history of cinema. Enns is known for employing various unconventional techniques and formats in his filmmaking, including found footage and glitch aesthetics.

Enns has also contributed to the field of media art through his writing and academic pursuits; his work has been published in various journals, publications and books.

Artist Details