Landscapes in Flux: From Glitch to Oil
Latent Fragments of a Synthetic Landscape is part of an ongoing investigation into how artificial intelligence, error, and traditional artistic practice intersect to reshape our understanding of landscape. Rather than presenting nature as a stable subject, the work refracts it through layers of computation and painterly translation. What emerges is not a depiction of place, but a terrain in flux: synthetic yet organic, fractured yet whole.
The project began with the training of a custom AI model using two distinct datasets. The first contained images of natural environments: mountains, forests, and skies. The second was drawn from a Unity-built forest simulation, which was processed through Moore’s own glitch shader pipelines to produce ruptures, distortions, and digital artifacts. Together, these datasets taught the model to oscillate between serenity and collapse, producing images that suggested landscapes but resisted resolution.
From this hybrid space, fragments were selected as source material for the final painting. These machine-born images were then outsourced to a workshop in China, where a painter reproduced them in oil on canvas with technical precision. This translation from digital hallucination to physical surface underscores not only the layering of code and craft, but also the hidden economies of cultural production.
The choice to have the painting executed by a craftsman in China raises questions about authorship, value, and the distribution of labor in contemporary art. The painter’s role was indispensable, yet largely invisible, collapsing into the background of the finished object. What appears as a singular artwork is in fact the result of transnational workflows that echo the same systems of outsourcing and commodification that structure global manufacturing.
In this way, Latent Fragments of a Synthetic Landscape does not simply merge generative AI with painting. It stages the contradictions of contemporary art-making: where human skill is simultaneously celebrated and obscured, where digital innovation relies on manual labor far from the site of display, and where the aura of the “handmade” is refracted through global supply chains. The work thus not only speculates on how machines imagine space but also insists on confronting the political and economic infrastructures that shape how images come into being today.
Latent Fragments of a Synthetic Landscape is currently on display at Vacation Forever as part of the New Yorks Finest group show.
