BURNT BY THE SUN - artificial intelligence and climate change
This book project, Burnt by the Sun reflects on two issues that have seemingly damned future generations and are a source of world anxiety, ie climate change and artificial intelligence. The series reflects on the story of Icarus, in Greek mythology, son of the inventor Daedalus who perished by flying too near the Sun with waxen wings. At a school race I photographed a child enveloped in a cloud of white candyfloss. It reminded me of a mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb. I thought of the technology that led to the creation of, and the consequences of the atomic bomb. The child devoured the spun sugar in less than a minute and stared at the bare stick.Created with great expectations, gone with regret, I mused.
The approach to the series is what I call “conceptual documentary’ - candid documentary photography with a narrative expanded by metaphorical and allegorical elements. The series was partly inspired by an annual school fun run, where children run around a track that is lit by huge ultraviolet lights. Foam is sprayed onto the course,creating multi- faceted chaos as the runners complete laps. Ultraviolet light to me has an otherworldly, apocalyptic feel. Portraits in UV light are hard to make out - faces look reversed, like a photographic negative, crepuscular. Watching children collide and crumple into indigo heaps while navigating pieces of broken foam made me think of the vulnerability of children and young adults at the coal face of chaos with new technologies and older world problems. Watching some extreme weather event happening in America on TV, my 10 year old son one day asked me, “What if the sun goes out?’ We discussed the horror and reality of this and then I said,’what happens if our human sun goes out!?’ With AI replacing jobs and our greed for fossil fuels turning the world into a furnace, what do children and young adults have to look forward to? Are they angry at the world they have inherited ? Are they angry enough?
Jon Stewart on the false promises of AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20TAkcy3aBY