Through the Lens of AI: The Diffusionists' Historical Illusions
Kai Brüninghofs Photo Album
Standing in Bratislava's House of Photography, I find myself caught in a captivating illusion. Before me unfolds a series of photographs that seem to have emerged from the depths of photographic history. Each image appears to capture a moment from a forgotten scientific laboratory of the 1920s, complete with sepia tones and the characteristic patina of vintage photographs. The technical precision of these historical documents is remarkable - perhaps too remarkable.
The illusion shatters, only to reveal something even more fascinating: these images were created in 2023, not by a traditional camera lens, but through the “lens” of artificial intelligence. The artist Kai Brüninghaus, a member of the "Diffusionists” movement, uses AI diffusion models to craft these historical mirages. His exhibition transcends mere technical demonstration, becoming a multi-layered meditation on the nature of photography, truth, and time itself.
The Art of the Time-Traveling Machine
The exhibited works bear titles like “Peer to Peer,” “Theory of Everything,” or “Telenergetic Concentration.” Each image shows people in intense interaction with mysterious technical apparatus. The aesthetics deliberately recall the early days of photography and science, when technical innovations were still surrounded by an aura of magic.
Particularly clever: The presentation of the images in an old photo album, available for purchase as an exhibition catalog. This presentation format not only enhances the historical appearance but becomes part of the artwork itself. The album becomes a “Laboratory for Time Resonance,” as one of the image titles suggests.
Truth and Illusion in the Digital Age
In his works, Brüninghaus addresses the increasing blur between reality and fiction in our digital present. As he writes: “The documentary and fictional components of the visual world, becoming increasingly blurred with the growing implementation of image-generating AI in social contexts, are reflected in the juxtaposition of historical and contemporary visual elements of the supposedly time-traveling Diffusionists.”
The scientific apparatus in his images creates an “apparent authenticity” - just like the historical aesthetics and presentation in the old photo album. As viewers, we succumb to this illusion, even while knowing its artificial nature. The images exist in a kind of interspace: technically created with cutting-edge methods, aesthetically anchored in the past, while reflecting on our present and future.
The Meta-Level: A Dialogue Between Human and Machine
The irony of my engagement with this exhibition becomes apparent as I begin discussing it with an AI. We - a human and an AI system - jointly analyze AI-generated images that thematize the relationship between humans and machines. This meta-level would probably have pleased Brüninghaus: It demonstrates exactly the kind of complex entanglement between reality and the digital world that his art addresses.
Beyond Real and Artificial
Perhaps the true brilliance of Brüninghaus's work lies precisely in its transcendence of the usual discussion about “real” versus “artificial.” His images - and the album as a complete artwork - create their own reality space where different temporal planes and forms of existence coexist as equals. The seemingly historical apparatus in the images is just as “real” as the AI technology that created it and the philosophical questions it raises.
As I write these lines with the help of an AI, I realize: We are already moving in exactly that hybrid space that Brüninghaus's work visualizes. It's no longer about distinguishing between human and artificial intelligence, but about the new forms of thinking, creating, and communicating that emerge in their intertwining. The “time-traveling Diffusionists” are perhaps less prophets of future development than precise chroniclers of our present - a present in which the boundaries between human, machine, and art have long since begun to flow.
