Cezar Mocan's Arcadia Inc. Shoots Its Own Stock Photos
Three AI agents walk a rendered pastoral in the Lisbon artist's real-time simulation, uploading pictures live to a fictional image bank.
Arcadia Inc. is a real-time simulation by Cezar Mocan in which three AI agents photograph a rendered pastoral landscape. The agents, named Ansel A.I., Claudia L. and Ralph W.E., upload their pictures live to arcadia.photography, the stock-image library of a company that exists only inside the work. The trailer opens with Ansel A.I. introducing itself as a landscape photographer with the firm.
An excerpt from the Arcadia Inc. trailer, silent as uploaded. The full trailer with sound is on Vimeo.
Each agent follows a route drawn from the history of looking at nature. Ansel A.I. is programmed to always walk west, and Claudia L. photographs the landscape from above. The project page describes the work's subject as image-making through "context erasure," the stripping of a picture's origins so it can carry new meanings.
For more reading, see our piece on Trackmania playing itself and the full trailer on Vimeo.
Frames from Arcadia Inc.; Cezar Mocan photographed by Bruna Buniotto for Arab Bank Switzerland.
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