'Anatomy of non-fact’ is an art/research project about mis- and over-information in the context of the looming threat of post-optical images. The work seeks a definition of the aesthetics of fact, via an in-depth analysis of visual hoaxes, fakes and conspiracies, through visual mapping and artistic responses. The ‘Anatomy’ reveals connections between case-studies and wider visual languages, media cultures, tools and events, while outlining speculative futures of visual fact. While photographic realism is largely understood as the only reliable visual evidence, can the interrogation of post-optical ( synthetic ) imagery resolve the mounting tension between faith and truth? Is the aesthetic of fact a material quality or is it ‘in the eye of the beholder’?

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'AI Hyperrealism’ is the first chapter of  ‘Anatomy of Non-Fact’ , which debuted at the 2024 Ars Electronica Festival. This chapter focuses on the figure of the fake Balenciaga Pope, which captured the attention and imagination of many, during the so-called ‘AI-boom’ of 2023. In the 18 minute video, mechanisms of AI-generation, visual journalistic languages, and digital cloning are augmented, partly stultified, and reified.

A monologue reflecting on the nature of fact, and delivered by the Balenciaga Pope, confronts the viewer’s expectation of authorities of truth and photographic image, while bending the established notations of visual evidence. In the context of mounting concern with synthetic image's potential to provoke mass-misinformation events, the work urges a reconsideration of our visual culture's relationship to photographic image instead. A series of definitions, old and new, are woven throughout the video piece, provoking reframing of existing terminologies related to Ai-generated images, and re-naming phenomena connected to issues of misinformation.

In the exhibition space, the  audience becomes confronted with a materialised version of the Balenciaga Pope’s coat - all  the impossibilities, lapses and glitches of the synthetic artefact are physically reconstructed, while references to history of visual truth from baroque to recent blobifications of AI-generated images, are embroidered in the coat’s lining.

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This work was released in part within the framework of the European Digital Deal Residency program at Ars Electronica with support of the Creative Europe Culture Programmeof the European Union.

Video work: Single-channel, HD, 18min.

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Written, produced and directed by Martyna Marciniak

Balenciaga Pope played by Derrick Jenkins

Hands played by Rojia Forouhar Abadeh,  Martyna Marciniak, Kotryna Slapsinskaite,

Sound design and score by Marco Pascarelli

Production Management - Kotryna Slapsinskaite

Videography - Hagen Betzwieser

Technical Design Consultancy - Edward Grace 

Design Consultancy - Joanne Grace

Technical Consultancy - Jan Schluter from Johannes Kepler University

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