Aiotype

Aiotype explores the shifting boundaries between physical and virtual realities through photography, artificial intelligence, and analog experimentation.
 
In this body of work, Sári Zagyvai investigates how contemporary technologies reshape our perception of landscape. Using photographs sourced online, artificial intelligence generates synthetic environments—composite terrains assembled from familiar visual elements such as seas, mountains, and deserts. These images reflect not specific locations, but the standardized visual language through which nature is increasingly represented and consumed.
 
The generated digital images are then transformed in the analog darkroom through a unique hybrid process. Replacing traditional film with a digital screen, Zagyvai combines digital and analog technologies, allowing pixels and photographic grain to coexist on the same surface. Through cameraless techniques, photograms, and enlarged details, additional layers emerge, creating intricate textures and mesh-like structures within the image.
 
Chance, accident, and material experimentation play a central role throughout the process. By embracing techniques that resist complete control, the work reconnects contemporary image-making with the earliest histories of photography. The resulting photographs exist between mediums, technologies, and realities—questioning how landscapes are constructed, remembered, and reimagined in the digital age.