■ Happy New Year 2023!

 

“The Show Must Go On”.

This time, we studied the Hanshin Racecourse, which was abuzz with excitement over the Queen Elizabeth Cup. Since the release of the “Complete” version of the conceptual works at last year’s Exhibition, my motivation to continue this project has been on the wane. I was wondering what to do with it when I received an invitation to another exhibition, so I decided to make this.

The photos were taken only on the day of the race, in bad conditions that made me feel like I was in England, (rain), (dark), (telephoto), and (the horses were running extraordinary fast).

The reason why I chose this race even in such bad conditions was to pay tribute to the Queen and many other famous people who passed away last year. Before the race, a movie of the queen was shown, saying, “Life is like horse racing. There are peaks and valleys”.

I would like to be proud of such a great effort, but that’s as far as it goes if you say it’s just another local horse race in Japan.

 

However, the “horse” is a convenient subject because the theme of this work is actually “AI, which has begun to deffuse in society”.

 

The story is reversed. In other words, the story begins with the scenery, which AI has become a familiar presence in the summer of 2022 in terms of image generation, text generation, etc. I wanted “captures” of it and thought let’s redesign “that” thing, and then decided the subject should be “horse”. In that case, Queen Elizabeth Cup must be better, I said.

The reason why I chose “horse” as the subject is because the first topic of discussion in image generation AI was “an astronaut riding a horse”.

But then, is “that thing”, “Let’s make the best city image with an artificial algorithm!“, really the source of the image-generating AI? In reality, I think it is as subtle as Kenji, the high school student who thought he has solved a mathematical puzzle at the beginning of “Summer Wars,”. He was mistaken, because there are more amazing people in the world.

 

But such a misunderstanding(?), the cavalry, and the pass away of the grandmother also have a “Summer Wars” feel to them, which is also in line with the theme of “AI starting to deffuse in society”. If things continue in this order, I have a feeling that a bright SF world will be realized in the near future. That’s why I want to shout now.

 

Kotoshi mo … yoroshiku onegai shima — su !!!

 

(The photo currently displayed is different from the actual work. The actual work will be shown after the exhibition in March)

—

So, in March, the group exhibition was successfully closed and the work was released to the public.

In March 2023, the evolution of generative AI is progressing at an ever-increasing pace, and in the meantime, “that” Microsoft started to incorporate ChatGPT into their search engine and the Office software, or Adobe gave the go-ahead for image generation and instead start NFTing metadata such as Exif information to guarantee uniqueness (not copy control or value guarantee). I’ve only heard a few things, but I think we are finally starting to see “New Era” of major changes. This is exciting.

 

I will leave the details of the work for the Description, but what I would like to add here is my own evaluation of the work. I think it is no exaggeration to say that this work is one of the representative works of Itsuki Kujo Photography. It is not often that I have such an opportunity, and I spent so much time on it….

So if you think you can make a series of works of the same level as this one, you’re mistaken, okay? And I’d like to make an excuse now. Because “Japanese animations” are so quick to try to inflate the strength-level, like that “Dragon Ball”.

 

Next time I’ll just take pictures (I promise).

 

 

 

 

 

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