This Prairie Does Not Exist
Jupyter Notebook Python GAN using photos from Nine Mile Prairie.
This work was minted and sold as a Non-Fungible Token (NTF) on the Tezos blockchain. This Prairie Does Not Exist began as an experiment using a General Adversarial Network (GAN) on timelapse data collected by the Platte Basin Timelapse project. I used a year’s worth of photos from a single camera stationed in a prairie nine miles away from campus.
Artist: Josí Morgan
“My goal is to explore the narrative power of time-lapse photography by combining it with AI. How can AI be used to help us reinvent our understanding of time? The project is not meant to be an illustration of an existing practice, but rather an opportunity to explore new ways of representing patterns within time-lapse footage. Ian Stewart said, “Humans are pattern-seeking animals, who make sense of their world by constructing stories which fit patterns detected in nature. These patterns can be found everywhere… It’s not just that everything is connected. Everything fits together.” To be human is to be a being who is open to the world, attuned to the world, tuned into the world and the deep patterns of nature. When we start to think of ourselves as part of a larger system, then our lives change. We need to know the context of time and how it is changing to design and invent the future. Instead of trying to change the way we think about time we should work with it.”
