Naama Eliraz

Quasi Others

It is relatively easy to remove the mask from reality (what appears to us as reality) and dismiss it as fiction; it is much harder to identify in 'substantive' reality the fictional part." -Slavoj Žižek- The entry of artificial intelligence into our lives and its integration into artistic practice examines the role and identity of the artist, the origin of artistic creation, and the place of humanity in art. The entire work is made up of a combination of innovation and tradition: "new material" - artificial intelligence, alongside one of the oldest materials in human history - clay. The various sculptures that comprise the project were created following a complex and inadequate interaction with the artificial intelligence program "Midjourney". The two-dimensional images provided by the software were translated back into the physical world through manual sculpting techniques. The bizarre images that emerged are a result of a synthesis between the sculptures "Pietà" by Michelangelo and "Laocoön and His Sons" (creator unknown). The sculptures presented in the project are made exclusively from clay and coated with terra sigillata, a traditional ceramic coating method that gives them a marble-like appearance. The result is a sculptural array of simulacra, physical semi-replicas that are familiar yet foreign within an origin-lacking reality.