POSTcard Landscapes from Lanzarote

Abstract

POSTcard Landscapes from Lanzarote I and II are two AI-generated video works accompanied by two sound pieces. The StyleGAN 2-created visuals were composed of location-based datasets, more precisely, from Flickr photos of Lanzarote - a tourists' Mecca of Canary Islands. One video intends to represent a touristic, and the other, a local view of the place. The project draws attention to the influence of the tourist gaze on the landscape and identity formation of the Lanzarote island in Spain. Heavily dominated by the imaginative geographies that have been constantly reproduced by the visitors, create a conflict between desired touristic rituals, which one is preprogrammed to reproduce when arrived at the destination, and the reality. Better said in the words of an expert on tourist photography Jonas Larsen "[...] circulating images overpower reality: reality' becomes touristic, an item for visual consumption."[3]