Alex Czetwertynski Artwork, Curation, Creative DirectionCurrently : Brussels | Belgium
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Commissioned for the HPA Tech Retreat 2025, Tokens & Noise is an imaginary journey through the process of a genAI model trying to create "Nature". The film was inspired by my own doubts on the excitement generated by some prominent media artist's approach to "digital nature". Nature, as I understand it, cannot be seen as a dataset, a point cloud, or any other algorithmic representation, those are all just pale, framed shadows of what we call "nature", and thinking that we are somehow brought closer to nature by these digital artifacts is the product of a highly cartesian and limited POV. In the words of Donna Harraway : 

"The very concept of 'nature' is a human construction, a moving target, whose meanings have shifted dramatically through human history." — "The Companion Species Manifesto" (2003)

Statement : 

"The digital and the natural are often seen as diametrically opposed, almost enemies of each other. Digital artists and evangelists regularly claim that the “digital” can come closer to the natural by representing its inner workings through algorithms or “data sets” that mimic it accurately. The advent of AI also pushes this proximity by positing that human and digital “intelligences” are akin. But these parallels often feel like a form of wishful thinking, where nature is understood as a quasi-mechanical system to be controlled and mimicked for our intellectual satisfaction. Tokens and Noise, two of the key computational concepts involved in generative AI, plays with this idea of a progressive creation of “nature” on screen, and asks to what extent this representation is really not just a pale shadow"

©MMXXIV