Staff Scholarship: Sarina Lirosi
Staff Scholarship: Sarina Lirosi
Profile:
First Year Convenor
Lecturer first year folio: Image and Concept 1 and 2
Domain: Truth and Technology
Project #1: Shades and Tints
Sarina was selected as a finalist and awarded 2nd place for the 2023 Photobook Week Aarhus (PWA) AI Contest: 'Our World Is Beautiful' held during Photobook Week Aarhus 2-5 November in Denmark. Since 2014, Galleri Image and the Aarhus School of Architecture have collaborated on organising Photobook Week Aarhus (PWA), a yearly festival focused on the rapidly growing international interest in photobooks with a recently added AI component and contest.
“In Abraham Werner’s Nomenclature of Colour (first published in 1814), language was similarly used to describe colour. In the 1821 publication, 110 colour swatches were each accompanied by three references to the Animal, Vegetable and Mineral worlds in an attempt to describe each colour. It quickly became the preeminent guide to colour and its classifications for artists, scientists, naturalists, and anthropologists in the 19th century.
The images in this series are created using the generative AI system DALL E2 by inserting text prompts from the colour descriptions in Werner’s Nomenclature of Colour. Each work in my series, although generated by 21st century technology, is a direct result of early 19th century language attempting to describe one individual colour by referring to the natural world.
I am interested in this merging of eras where current technology is faced with the nuances of 19th century language in which subtle distinctions in meaning have since been lost. This sometimes inadvertently results in unexpected or ambiguous (generated) images that raise many questions both about the technology and our perceptions of the natural world.”
Teaching Strategies:
Undertaking and recognition of the project Shades and Tints acts to guide students in the use of new technologies in informed, ethical and experimental ways. Importantly, the project could not have been made or conceptually developed without the research that was undertaken to stimulate ideas and progress with image-making techniques. The research ranged from technical consideration of AI generation, historical colour classification and extended to international awards where my project might fit the themes and ideas that the institutions are interested in exploring.
Biography:
Sarina Lirosi is a Melbourne based multidisciplinary artist and educator of Italian descent who often works with photography and mixed media, including sculpture and collected ephemera. Her practice explores the relationship between desire and loss, particularly regarding nature and the human condition. Sarina is the convenor of the first year of the Bachelor of Photography.