What if the Eiffel Tower turned into a pile of scrap metal and the Louvre pyramid collapsed under the weight of time? No, it's not a disaster movie scenario, but the universe created by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre in The Ruins of Paris. In parallel with their photo book (released in November by Albin Michel), the duo returns with a free exhibition which plunges the capital into a post-apocalyptic Paris, emptied of its inhabitants and consumed by chaos. A dystopian vision that scares us as much as it fascinates.
Marchand and Meffre, explorers of urban wastelands and other cheerful abandoned settings, have decided to play the architects of the apocalypse. This time, they let their cameras mingle with the circuits of artificial intelligence software, Midjourney, to push Paris into a downright scary future: a Pompidou Center with rusty pipes, a Gallery of Evolution transformed into a jungle worthy of a Noah's ark, and more mundane places like a laundromat or a bus depot which scream desolation. End of the world atmosphere guaranteed.
More than 52,000 images, an average of 650 generations to obtain an image
But spoiler: achieving this result isn't just about typing three magic words into software. To create their 80 ultra-slick images, the duo had to generate more than 52,000 – yes, you read correctly – and refine every detail with prompts and retouching. Interested parties ask: “When we came across the first convincing AI-generated images at the end of 2022, we were incredulous for a while. Was it enough to “prompt” a few words to obtain images that were truer than life? The problem is that imagination often leads us to the same place. And that generation by AI exposes us to an infinity of choices that must be constrained… We must know precisely where we are going, while seeking it with flexibility. » Between capricious AI and human creativity, they had to tame the machine to obtain these sometimes recalcitrant visions. And given the result, we can say that it was worth the effort.
This isn't just a tech trip for buzz-seeking geeks. This project is also a reflection on what obsesses us all: ruins and what they say about our lives and our ends. “Ruins tell the story of past civilizations, but with AI, we can imagine those of a future that could become reality,” summarize Marchand and Meffre. Basically, it's well-crafted past-prospective, between nostalgia and dystopia.
And as if that wasn't enough, writer Nathan Devers adds a layer in an afterword that explores our fascination with what is disappearing and the frightening limits of artificial intelligence. In short, it's not just beautiful, it's also wickedly profound. Free, immersive, and a little creepy, this exhibition immerses you in a fashionable Paris game overbetween contemporary art and futuristic vision. But don't delay: these visions will disappear in a few days. Tick-tock.
Or ? Court of Venice, 12 Rue Saint-Gilles, 75003 Paris
When ? Until January 18, 2025
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