The photographer using AI to reconstruct stories lost to censorship

Almagul Menlibayeva’s Map of Nomadizing Reimaginings. | Image: Almagul Menlibayeva

Video screens glow softly from the floor, looping footage of brackish lakes, steppe villages, and decaying atomic trial sites. Suspended supra them is simply a ample handwoven textile map, crafted by artisans successful Kazakhstan. The tapestry maps 12 important sites crossed Kazakhstan and the surrounding region, each corresponding to 1 of the flickering videos below. This is Posthuman Matter: The Map of Nomadizing Reimaginings #3, the latest large-scale installation by lensman and multimedia creator Almagul Menlibayeva.

Recently unveiled astatine the VRHAM! Digital & Immersive Art Biennale successful Hamburg, Germany, the enactment is portion of Menlibayeva's ongoing bid of "cyber textiles," which connection a striking blend of trade and code. It imagines an alternate cartography of Central Asia, with each video successful the installation infusing the locations with erased histories and traditions, putting distant an alternate aboriginal for them. While the tapestries are created by hand, the videos are a substance of existent and replicated, built from documentary footage captured by Menlibayeva and past augmented with AI to infuse feminist rituals, nomadic storytelling traditions, and whispers of endangered languages.

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.