Albert Sten

Contact:
albertoscarsten@gmail.com
+46 76-853 55 83

And What Happened Next? (Horses)
2024

On going work exploring found footage of horses bought at a flea market. The meeting between AI generated moving images and the materiality of the found footage is the focus of the piece.

The work is part of several other works exploring the anti-photographic aspects of artificial intelligence. Doing the opposite to the medium of photography when making images move through its algorithmic dreaming.

Ögonkontakt / Eye Contact
2023
Exhibited at:
Super Sight, SJCD, 2023
gna project, 2023

Ögonkontakt / Eye Contact consists of archival material from a family album that has been AI-generated into moving images. The archival material consists of glass negatives scanned in the early 2000s and has therefore been a low-resolution source material. The artist has worked with the information gap in the work to see what the result becomes through an AI-generated enhancement. The focus of the eyes in the work takes leaps in perhaps the most profound communication we humans are accustomed to: eye contact. What happens when still images are presented as moving material? The recurring gazes become a meeting with an archive, artificial memories with relatives, but also an examination of how real the generated eyes are perceived. A recurring death algorithm or a mirror to the soul.

A Hard Currency of Memories
2024

A Hard Currency of Memories is an experimental essay film that navigates the intricate relationship between memory and data. Through individual interviews detailing experiences of data loss, along with field site visits and interviews at a data recovery lab, the film sets out to investigate the infrastructure underlying this modern phenomenon. Enriched with archival material, it offers a deep dive into the complexities of memory preservation in the digital age.

Directed by: Albert Sten
Photography, script, sound and edit by: Albert Sten

Archival material from The Prelinger Archives Home Movies. Sourced from the Internet Archive. As well as private family films from the directors personal albums.

AI-generated voiceover from ElevenLabs

Jag ärvde en mörk skog dit jag sällan går
2021
Exhibited at:
Nordic Light Festival, 2023
Härnösand Konsthall, 2022
Röda Sten Konsthall, 2021

Jag ärvde en mörk skog dit jag sällan explores a location that encompasses a family, forestry history, and a strike conflict that occurred in Ådalen in 1931. The work consists of contemporary photography as well as archival material from family and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Through interventions in the archival material and encounters between different sources, a weave of place, memory, and history is portrayed in an attempt to understand a personal and collective heritage.

You Have Just Bought a Piece of Photographic History
2022

Exhibited at:
Härnösands Konsthall, 2022

Diving into the dark history of the shootings in Ådalen 1931, Sweden I was interested in researching more photographic history connected to the event. To my surprise there were several old archival news images for sale in the Lithuania from the event. I decided to buy them and use them in the “Jag ärvde en mörk skog dit jag sällan går”.

The images was displaced as a work at Härnösands Konsthall in 2022 with a passepartour on a light box. In this way they were both highlighted as historical objects themselves and not only for the photographs. Also the notes buy journalists are seen as much as the images themselves.

Another part of the work itself was the process of buying back the images and relocating them to the region where they were taken. Most people in Sweden have at some stage seen the famous image of the demonstration before the shooting, these images together give further insights to the conflict before, during and after.

Studie av ansikte
2021

Dödsupplevelser
2023
Exhibited at:
gna project, 2023

Dödsupplevelser (Death Experiences) is an exhibition that explores concepts of digital immortality and digital re-creation. With various photo-based technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, there are voices today arguing that the border between real and digital life may soon be blurred. The works in the exhibition explore the spiritual side of these technological developments. How similar ideas are found in religion and mythology, how sophisticated the technology is for this and what glitches that might occur in the process. The exhibition also shows archival material and texts from a hundred-year-old diary containing correspondence with a medium who was part of the anthroposophical circles of the time.

The images and video works shown are a mixture of material from family albums, ai-generated images and new material created in dialogue. The techniques are intertwined and photography as a medium is at the center of the various questions raised throughout the different works in the exhibition.

Händer / Hands
2023
Exhibited at:
gna project, 2023

The work was part of the exhibition Dödsupplevelser. It is an AI generated piece inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s sequences. One of the problems with early AI image generators was the ability to create hands and espacially fingers.

Polypodiaphyta
2022