While we might not always know the specifics of how a softimage is made (whether through machine learning and neural networks, generative software, simulation, or graphic editing), we can recognize one when we see it: morphing, gooey, lush, emergent, evolving and adaptive, an image ever in-between one state and the next. The softimage refuses stability; it feels alive. The artists gathered reflect on the significance of softimages, a concept coined and theorized by Ingrid Hoelzl and Rémi Marie, which dominate the algorithmically-generated image landscape we navigate online. Each work foregrounds the artistic narratives and stories of generative images, the field of frenzied political and social activity around them, and their strange poetics. Softimage Poetics is an auction to support X-TRA, Los Angeles’ longest running contemporary art journal of artists’ writing and criticism on its 25th anniversary. Curated by Nora N. Khan.
Lead Image: A render by Asad Khan, from Toxic Gumbo, included in Softimage Poetics.