This is an altered, fictional, and alternative dataset.
A dataset in search of its own essence
comprised of images that evoke others.
noun
1. the basic, real, and invariable nature of a thing or its significant individual feature or features.
2. a substance obtained from a plant, drug, or the like, by distillation, infusion, etc., and containing its characteristic properties in concentrated form.
3. an alcoholic solution of an essential oil; spirit.
4. a perfume; scent.
5. Philosophy. the inward nature, true substance, or constitution of anything, as opposed to what is accidental, phenomenal, illusory, etc.
6. something that exists, especially a spiritual or immaterial entity.
These images synthesize and exaggerate elements: tall buildings with numerous windows, trees in between the streets, the faded sepia color of the paper, the mountains on the horizon. Is this a city?
What constitutes the essence of a plant?
The arrangement of the leaves?
The distance between the branches emerging from the stem?
The colouring of the petals?
If we could extract that essence,
could we discern what it is that configures this entity we call a "plant"?
It is quite peculiar.
The image would be the result of the "reading" or "interpretation"
of an image. Does interpreting an image always imply producing a new image?
The algorithm's action could tell us something relevant
about our own relationship with images. Nonetheless, we must bear in mind that this reading
or interpretation is "algorithmic".
What happens when we process historical images through the eye of artificial intelligence?
What kind of gaze into the past do the machine learning algorithms return to us?
The visual homogeneity that floats in these artificial images speaks to us about the imaginary
of a captured era.
Is this the essence of the past?