Duenwald

Germany

Where do you locate yourself in relation to the systems you work with?

I position myself in a close but critical relationship to the systems I work with. I do not experience AI as a neutral tool, but as a powerful visual system shaped by cultural assumptions, aesthetic norms, and invisible hierarchies. Working with it means constantly negotiating my own position within these structures. I allow the system to generate, surprise, and even overwhelm me, but I do not surrender authorship. Through selection, variation, and editing, I intervene where the system begins to smooth over complexity or reproduce familiar ideals. What interests me is not control, but friction—moments where the logic of the machine and my own intuition collide. My practice unfolds from within the system, not outside of it. I work with AI in order to question its authority, to make its tendencies visible, and to explore what happens to bodies, and meaning when human imagination and algorithmic processes become inseparable.

Where are you heading, and what is pulling you there?

I am drawn to those interstitial spaces in which the human and the imaginary overlap. I do not work towards a fixed goal; rather, I follow an open-ended inquiry: how do our images of the human change when they are co-shaped by algorithmic systems? What drives my practice is less the search for answers than a willingness to remain with uncertainty. I am interested in transitional states and in images that resist a singular, stable reading. Working with AI intensifies this process. It confronts me with aesthetic decisions that no longer emerge solely from my own intentions, but unfold in dialogue with a system that brings its own logics and constraints. Within this context, I increasingly consider entering into a form of dialogue with the creatures I develop. What interests me is less what they might say than the question of how communication becomes possible when the counterpart is no longer unambiguously human and does not possess consciousness of its own. Can this still be considered communication?

How would you describe the space your practice is currently unfolding in?

My practice unfolds within a fluid and open space shaped by transitions and processes of negotiation. I pose questions, the AI responds. What emerges is not a result in the conventional sense, but an ongoing exchange between me, the algorithm and the viewer . This space is not structured dogmatically. Alongside critical reflection, a playful and sensorial approach plays a central role. Intuition, chance, and visual seduction are as integral to the work as deliberate decisions and interventions. Moving between different platforms intensifies this openness and prevents the premature fixation of aesthetic positions. At its core, my practice revolves around the human—not only my own position, but that of the viewer. The images challenge perception, generate ambivalence, and demand active engagement. The work seeks to respond to the likely painful ruptures of future developments not with resistance or nostalgia, but by inviting attentiveness, irritation, and a willingness in the viewer to allow new images of the human to emerge.

Artist Statement

I work with AI because it opens up new visual worlds and makes images available for reinterpretation. Midjourney and similar tools interest me not as a means of imitating the world, but as systems that allow us to rethink how we see, remember and invent. In a world flooded with images, the focus is no longer on the 'beautiful image'; it is on the possible image, and even the unprecedented. The question is whether the unprecedented even exists. The generation process is a hybrid way of thinking in images. I start with language and individual image elements, which are fragmentary, intuitive. From there, I enter a field of controlled openness. I set out on a journey whose destination is still unknown to me. This moment is central. I no longer formulate, I observe. I observe what emerges from parameters and the subconscious. This also raises the question: Algorithms cannot represent feelings. Let me be clear: can they create something that will trigger emotions in the viewer? The machine itself feels nothing. It provides a stage on which my inner states can be visualised. Feelings do not materialise in code, but in images and in the space between them. It is a double projection: I project into the AI, and it plays back something that can be emotionally charged. This also brings an old question back into focus: What is beauty? I want to know where the line is between beauty and disgust. AI images often move precisely in this border region. It is clear that the forms displayed are both fascinating and disturbing. It is clear that beauty here is not a harmonious state, but rather a precarious balance. The code interweaves ornamentation with anomalies, grace with deviation. It is precisely the machine logic that reveals the close link between aesthetics and irritation. AI is not a mere tool; it is a co-player. AI is a semi-autonomous system that challenges and expands my imagination. Classic motifs, including the body, myth and nature, are brought to life by algorithmic access. They appear, are shifted, exaggerated or emptied. It is a process of alienation and reappropriation. Donna Haraway speaks of the 'cyborg' as a figure of mixing and resistance against closed identities. My images are cyborgic: they belong neither to me nor to the machine, but exist in a third space. In this space, art history dances with code. And not in a nostalgic or linear way, but in a speculative way.

Published in >

The AI Art Magazine, Number 3

After the Soul, AI generation, 2026.

Duenwald, After the Soul, AI generation, 2026

Description

The series brings together a range of hybrid beings, generated in dialogue between human intuition and algorithmic logic. They are neither unambiguously human nor unequivocally artificial; their bodies are fragmented and extended, as if suspended in a state of permanent transformation. At the centre of the work lies less the question of technological feasibility than that of the existence of a soul. The AI itself possesses no interiority, no capacity for feeling. And yet images emerge that assert a sense of presence, gazes, postures, and forms of vulnerability that generate resonance in the viewer. The soul appears here not as a metaphysical possession, but as a space of projection, the existence of a soul as a performative act of attribution. The series consciously operates at the threshold between empathy and estrangement. The bodies invite identification while simultaneously resisting it. In this way, the depicted beings become mirrors of a posthuman condition. They do not ask whether machines can feel, but whether our traditional concepts of interiority, identity, and dignity remain negotiable—or not.

Process

My motivation for working with AI is rooted in an ethical concern, what does algorithmic image production do to our understanding of beauty and humanity? AI generates images with remarkable authority. It shapes aesthetic norms, reinforces ideals, and reproduces cultural assumptions. Without revealing the frameworks on which they are based. As a female designer, I am especially interested in how ideals of beauty shift when they are co-produced by machines, and in what kinds of bodies and identities emerge in the process, particularly where dignity becomes fragile or begins to erode. My work deliberately seeks friction. It resists the affirmation of perfection and instead opens spaces of ambiguity, discomfort, and doubt. In this way, AI becomes not an instrument of optimisation, but a means of critical self-examination.

Tools

The starting point of my practice is an expanding archive of public-domain visual material, many of it drawn from the Renaissance. I combine these historical fragments in Midjourney using the “blend” function with formally unrelated material, often generated by myself in earlier stages. The deliberate collision of disparate visual registers gives rise to hybrid intermediary spaces. I introduce prompts only at a later stage, typically in the form of abstract terms such as “dystopian,” “surreal” or “frightening” Rather than functioning as directives, these terms serve to establish an atmospheric framework for the generative process. The work unfolds in an associative, exploratory manner. Through variation, filtering, and selective editing, an aesthetic focus gradually emerges. The process is not linear but combinatorial. It is a dialogue between found material and emergent form.

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Published in:
The AI Art Magazine, Number 3,
April 2026

Published in >

The AI Art Magazine, Number 2

, AI generation, .

Duenwald, , AI generation,