I asked artist Cezar Mocan some questions. This is what he answered.

Cezar on using AI as his medium in his practice -
My work has always been rooted in software, initially in the form of browser-based interventions and generative art—often small websites that played against the accelerationism of the "default" internet, circling around nostalgia, slowness, repetition, emotional connection. Over the past few years, I’ve been finding joy in world-building with game engines, as a means towards creating narrative simulations — zero-player computer games, which use generative techniques and artificial intelligence to create proto-narratives that unfold over time, without ever repeating themselves. Early in my journey with game engines, I was interested in interactivity, but over time the "user" became smaller and smaller, until it disappeared completely. Both ends of the interaction now involve more or less complex forms of artificial intelligence.

The early impulses that drove me towards nostalgia, slowness, and repetition are still present, and they show up in my work in conjunction with a more recent interest in the natural landscape and the built infrastructures that inhabit it, through the lens of artificial life. I’m interested in how these assemblages mediate human perception and reasoning at an emotional level—the moments when utility turns into affective memory.

Cezar on how the conversation around AI has changed in the last year -
There are so many layers to this question, so many “AI”s and so many “art”s, so many stakeholders that are relevant, so I'll focus on my online and offline social bubbles. I’m observing a shift in the discourse led by the fact that (generative) AI is becoming infrastructuralized. As artists, we're developing a deeper understanding of these tools' capabilities and limitations, we're increasingly incorporating them into our practices and relying on them. In this light, the conversations about AI within my art world nooks have become increasingly nuanced, more accepting of it as a legitimate creative medium, and, importantly, more productive towards shaping a thoughtful version of a future alongside AI. There's a renewed energy around issues like data privacy, consent, and responsible data stewardship, and I find hope in the fact that individual artists and cultural institutions alike are exploring new models for distribution, ownership, and copyright.

Cezar on the collaborative element in Arcadia Inc. -
A core part of Arcadia Inc. is challenging the notion of a blank slate in image production. While Arcadia Inc., as a company, claims that the landscape photographs it generates are context-free, its automated creation is still deeply rooted in various forms of implicit collaboration. The photographs are born from a simulated world, built with assets that often include 3D scans of real objects, performed by real people. At a later stage of the image creation pipeline, they are enhanced using diffusion models, introducing a new network of unseen collaborators. Even the tools used in creating the simulation (e.g. Unreal Engine,) exist within a collaborative ecosystem.

Arcadia Inc. creates this “human exclusion zone” of cultural production, but the reality is that even this most automated and seemingly isolated context is actually fully embedded with human input and collaboration.

Cezar on hi, I'm Ansel A.I. and hi, I'm Claudia L. -
The two videos are personal introductions by employees of Arcadia Inc., a fictional company whose main focus is the production of context-free landscape photography.

As an artwork, Arcadia Inc. explores the commodification of nature through computer-generated landscape imagery. I'm particularly interested in how context erasure serves as a mechanism for reprogramming images with new meanings. I fell into a research rabbit hole by asking why it is that we always see landscape photography on our computer desktops, and it led me to create this world where virtual beings photograph scenic beauty in a real-time simulation, as a way to create nature imagery for brand-based visual communication (think stock photos,) arguably without pre-existing history or context. I framed the simulation, the images it produces and its surrounding ecosystem as a company, one which sells empty scenic beauty. The company has an online presence, at https://arcadia.photography, and has been invited to apply for a startup accelerator on one occasion :)

I've been intrigued by the increasing role of technological automation in shaping our visual culture, and when I started this project in 2020 the generative AI boom was just about to set off. Throughout the last four years, this project has been a way for me to ask questions about the future of image making, realise that the present has caught up with my imagined future, and subsequently try to catch up with the present.

Bio
Cezar Mocan is a Lisbon-based artist and computer programmer interested in the interplay between technology and the natural landscape. Using narrative generative systems—animated videos of infinite duration, real-time simulations built in game engines or other software—he creates worlds that recontextualize aspects of digital culture we take for granted, often in absurd ways, while investigating the power structures which mediate our relationship with technology. Drawing on media archaeology and art history, his research process traces the origins of our current thought patterns around (technological) progress. Some of his past works have been exhibited with Inter/Access (Toronto), Office Impart (Berlin), Panke Gallery (Berlin), Onassis ONX Studio (New York), Romanian Design Week (Bucharest) and The Wrong Biennale. His real-time simulation work, Arcadia Inc. was recognized as a 2021 winner of the Lumen Prize in Art and Technology. Cezar holds a B.S. in Computer Science (2016) from Yale University and an M.P.S. in Interactive Telecommunications (2021) from New York University, where he also served as a research resident and adjunct professor.

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Cover Image: Cezar Mocan, Still from hi, I'm Ansel A.I., 2024, part of Arcadia Inc. (2021-present)