David Fathi (FR, b. 1985) who holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science, combines a career in engineering with an interdisciplinary artistic practice. His work, whether made up of still or moving images, often takes root in archives and visual databases, blurring the boundaries between documentary and contemporary art.
Fathi’s Feedback Loop project is a reflection on the question of authorship in art – a question which arose with the invention of photography, which has been approached by many artists and philosophers since, and which has taken on new urgency with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI).
For the series, Fathi verbalises a task to an AI algorithm, which then creates new images on the basis of publicly available ones; Feedback Loop sees AI rework the concept of authorship autonomously, creating images based on Niepce’s View from the Window at Le Gras and Duchamp’s readymade images. This dialogue is an intellectual game of sorts, the rules of which are yet to be established. Some argue that the artwork is the AI algorithm itself, and that the images it outputs are not artistic pieces because they come to life without artistic will. Yet even in this case, the artist makes deliberate choices, selecting a specific algorithm, a specific task and specific images from a set provided.
Artist is presented by PUNCTUM