1-channel film, sound
full HD, 16:9
2:05 min
Have you seen this person before? is an audiovisual exploration of the human brain’s suggestibility and the uncanny feelings surrounding the unreliable nature of our personal recollections based on the phenomenon of false memories.
By utilizing a variety of suggestive techniques inspired by experimental research and the methods implemented during recovered-memory therapy as a reference to the Memory Wars controversy, it visualizes a typical false memory implantation procedure while also investigating the current role of machine learning and generative AI within the contemporary formation process of false memories, revealing the tremendous power of artificially created media specifically in the context of the distribution of fake news within the digital space.
Supported by a computer-generated voiceover and discreetly unsettling sound effects, the still image presenting the hyperrealistic AI-based portrait of a non-existent person eerily stares into the viewer’s soul, becoming alive purely out of the deliberately evoked process of reflective imagination. Through the psychological influences of subliminal manipulation via external suggestion, the viewer is subconsciously being enticed to a constant cycle of self-doubting contemplation, slowly becoming untrustful of their own memory.
(2024)