A curatorial journey through synthetic landscapes

This work interrogates whether synthetic landscapes - born from algorithmic abstraction - can be "rewilded" through active human intervention. It explores how the human hand can navigate, select, and assemble AI-generated material into a meaningful structure while contending with unpredictable outcomes.

Marta Isabel Araújo Amorim highlights the complexity of curating generative algorithms, which operate through statistical inference, rather than by artistic or conceptual reasoning. The curatorial approach applied in this work was guided by the idea of constructing a synthetic visual landscape, selecting images that exist between microscopic organic structures and artificial formations. The process begins with initial textual prompts that reference abstract and subjective qualities, created through interactions with language. These prompts initiate iterative cycles of image production, during which the artist-researcher actively negotiates with the randomness of the system. Nonetheless, the resulting compositions remain devoid of inherent meaning until they undergo curatorial decision-making, an evaluative stage on what to retain or discard. These ambiguous compositions subtly evoke dynamics within nature’s generative processes while cultivating speculation and ambiguity, ultimately creating ways of seeing digital environments as fluid, interwoven ecosystems.