Multichannel video installation at Localize Festival Potsdam
4:40 Min
by Nikan Salari
Music by Aly Ostovar

The video installation “Shooting The Moment” is an experiment with Artificial Intelligence and is part of an artistic research on AI and filmmaking/film editing, a dystopian interplay between AI, photography, tourism and leisure activities through a critical lens. Inspired by Susan Sontag‘s thought-provoking insights into the nature of photography, the installation explores how our obsession with capturing moments can lead to superficial, violating and mechanical engagement with our surroundings in the age of AI.

The terms “capture” and “shoot” in photography evoke an aggressive impression. It is like killing the moment for itself. However, these photos also become memories. One can choose which memories to keep and which to discard, allowing us to become the editor of our own lives. The critical aspect of the installation is to think about these words in today‘s situation: how can you “capture” and “shoot” a moment, a memory with AI?

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time”. Susan Sontag (1977)