Created with an artificial neural network, Chris Tille´s series of portraits titled 'Born Dead' are immediately unsettling in their conceptual and visual message. Two computer systems, working together and correcting each other completely unaided, generated 30,000 images from data alone. Faces from numbers, eyes from ones and zeros, expressions from equations – this is an amazing and shocking new dimension. Our mind and senses struggle to distinguish between reality and a constructed truth - so called fake news. We would scarcely recognise that these depictions are forged and do not exist, they only manifest themselves through Tille's representations.
'Born Dead' is the result of intensive reflection on technological progress, on artificial intelligence (AI) and our deeply rooted relationships built over many decades. It was photography that conveyed facts to us, and in doing so it underpinned its own credibility and integrity. Only through photographic images history became unchangeable and was an unchallenged witness to world events.
In this project, Tille´s emotive yet disturbing portraits force the observer to confront a new reality – an age in which not everything is as it seems. These technological innovations change the status of photography adding confusing layers to the viewer. We are now far beyond mere manipulation and artificial intelligence (AI) can create brand new realities for which today´s world serves merely as a blueprint.
Tille presents this transformation in a powerful and poignant way by engaging in the tradition of portraiture. In his new series ‘Born Dead’ he presents a futuristic vision and event, where he merges rational scientific concepts with visual accessibility and technological progress.
Captured on photographic paper these androids are imbued with a human resemblance, they nevertheless associate with Sci-Fi and perhaps indicate what's in store for mankind. These digital entities are 'Born Dead', having no life, inhabiting an environment of digital synapses and as such they straddle the division between humanoid and being, thus invading our lives. Constructing these fake identities demonstrates Tille's artistic and technical skills, so timely echoing our increasingly precarious, alien and challenging world.
Chris Tille was born in Munich, Germany in 1971 and educated in Innsbruck, Austria. His, Rottach-Egern, Hyatt Regency, Calcutta, and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. He has won the following awards prolific exhibition repertoire includes in 2019: Malta Contemporary Art, Sliema and a Private Collection, Beijing. He participated in 2018 at the Art Festival, Beijing, Galerie Smudajescheck, Munich and the Max-Planck-Institut for Astrophysics, Garching. In 2017, Tille's work was presented at Art Affairs, Frankfurt, Folly & Muse, London and Malta Contemporary Art, Sliema. Furthermore, in 2016, at Galerie der Moderne, Stefan Vogdt Munich, and Galerie Junger, Shanghai. In 2015, he exhibited at the Offizium an den Pinakotheken, Schlawien, MOCA Beijing, and Folly & Muse, London. Earlier exhibitions were at the Überfahrt, Rottach-Egern, Hyatt Regency, Calcutta, and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. Tille has won the following awards: Best Photographer & Designer, DWC Deutsche Wirtschaftschronik, Innovationsstandort and Bayern Sonderteil Photography/Design. His photographs are held in major international corporate, private and public collections.
Newsletter: ©Chris Tille (photography) and Renée Pfister (text), 2019. All rights reserved.
Video: Courtesy and ©Chris Tille and Renée Pfister {@reneepfister), Ben Sound, Sci-Fi (music), https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/sci-fi with the assistance of Galina Matveeva, 2019. All rights reserved.
Chris Tille, Untitled 1, Born Dead series, 2019, photograph on paper, edition of 6, H1000 mm x W 1000 mm