The first Gulf War is widely considered to be the first war to showcase so many technologies that we now take for granted: global positioning systems, "intelligent" missiles and bombs, advanced "stealth" fighters, remote-control vehicles, and the like. Moreover, it was the first war characterized by the military's intense curation of its media coverage. The combination of then-advanced AI systems and the carefully curated reporting beamed back to the American and international public led media theorists to describe it as a watershed moment, where weapon systems, imaging devices, and military propaganda converged into a single phenomenon. This led French theorist Jean Baudrillard, author of the book "Simulation and Simulacra," to declare: "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place."

In a world characterized by ever more intense and ever more invasive forms of surveillance, I think about how so many of the systems we rely on every day (the Internet, city streets, smartphones, etc.) are like technological predators, tracking our every move, our every heartbeat, looking for a moment to take a piece out of us. I wanted to create a model that would see a world through the eyes of prey, a model where literally everything it could see was something that was out to get it.

The cosmic horror genre emphasizes a universe that is at once utterly incomprehensible to humans and utterly indifferent to them. To quote the genre's most well-known author:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

• H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

The first Gulf War is widely considered to be the first war to showcase so many technologies that we now take for granted: global positioning systems, "intelligent" missiles and bombs, advanced "stealth" fighters, remote-control vehicles, and the like. Moreover, it was the first war characterized by the military's intense curation of its media coverage. The combination of then-advanced AI systems and the carefully curated reporting beamed back to the American and international public led media theorists to describe it as a watershed moment, where weapon systems, imaging devices, and military propaganda converged into a single phenomenon. This led French theorist Jean Baudrillard, author of the book "Simulation and Simulacra," to declare: "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place."

In a world characterized by ever more intense and ever more invasive forms of surveillance, I think about how so many of the systems we rely on every day (the Internet, city streets, smartphones, etc.) are like technological predators, tracking our every move, our every heartbeat, looking for a moment to take a piece out of us. I wanted to create a model that would see a world through the eyes of prey, a model where literally everything it could see was something that was out to get it.

The cosmic horror genre emphasizes a universe that is at once utterly incomprehensible to humans and utterly indifferent to them. To quote the genre's most well-known author:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

• H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

These models try to imagine a Western medieval worldview, where landscapes, images, objects, and concepts are theological allegories. A vision in which the world of objects is characterized by their theological significance.

Albrecht Dürer's Meisterstiche—Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in His Study (1514), and Melencolia I (1514)—are central to the history of allegorical art and were key inspirations for Walter Benjamin's theory of images.

In The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928), Benjamin proposed that allegory is not merely a symbolic or didactic representation but a fragmented, disjointed depiction that reveals the ruins of meaning rather than a direct, unified interpretation. Allegory operates in a space where things stand in for broader concepts but do not seamlessly embody them.

What does it mean to create a dataset and model that holds the question of meaning and non-meaning in a state akin to a quantum superposition, where both exist and do not exist simultaneously?

In the three-part trilogy "Eye/Machine" (2001-2003), the late artist and filmmaker Harun Farocki explored the role of machine vision and automated systems in warfare, surveillance, and everyday life. The films show how machines are trained to "see" through targeting systems, surveillance cameras, and automated production lines—mechanical eyes that reduce the world to calculable, measurable, and actionable data, often without human intervention. He concludes the first film with the statement: 'Thinking of a war of autonomous machines, a war without soldiers like a factory without workers'

Composed of images of deep sea creatures, deep space objects, and the instruments humans have used to explore them, “From the Depths” imagines a world populated by entities by objects and entities that inhabit spaces beyond our everyday perceptions.

The "Interpretation of Dreams" draws on Sigmund Freud's exploration of the unconscious mind. For Freud, images in the surreal and fragmented landscape of dream-life stand in for latent desires, repressed memories, and unconscious conflicts manifest. It includes imagery that reflects the dream-work process as understood by Freud —condensation, displacement, and the transformation of unconscious thoughts into visual imagery.

A model that can see – and can only see – monsters that have historically been allegories for different moments in a capitalist cycle. Vampires as capitalists, zombies as consumers or laborers, octopuses as monopolies, mummies as the historical connection between capitalism and colonization, etc.

A world of entities or phenomena whose existence is defined by absence, lack, or the space around them, rather than by a positive, tangible presence. These are paradoxical types of things, existing as voids, gaps, or openings that shape reality precisely because they are not "things" in the traditional sense.

A model that sees the world as containing only omens and portents. A model that sees signs of danger, change, or transition. A model that sees in the liminal space between superstition, mythology, and cultural belief.

"Other Gods" is trained to see and identify deities and divine figures from mythologies around the world. The model operates under the premise that gods, demigods, and divine entities are ever-present, hidden within the world's imagery, and waiting to be revealed. What if the only reality were divine realities?

A model trained to perceive the world solely through the lens of objects found in Renaissance still life paintings, whose depictions of fruits, flowers, food, vessels, and symbolic items conveyed themes of mortality, wealth, and the transience of life. The model turns the contemporary world into a tableau of Renaissance art.

A world in the distant future. The humans are long gone. Organic forms flow through submerged and subconscious landscapes. A model inspired by the anonymously authored collection of poems "A Natural History of Seaweed Dreams."

"Plankton-fed, sleep-drugged eyes cast down in the direction of the sacred." “Manta rays bloom in cosmic night.”

• Anonymous

This dataset explores the space between human representations and the technologies or extensions we have created. It is eclectic and unpredictable, highlighting both the particularities of human identity and the ways we project ourselves through the images and objects we create. “The Humans” captures a mix of images, ideas, and constructs that serve as reflections or distortions of what it means to be human in a world shaped by technology and fantasy.

The first Gulf War is widely considered to be the first war to showcase so many technologies that we now take for granted: global positioning systems, "intelligent" missiles and bombs, advanced "stealth" fighters, remote-control vehicles, and the like. Moreover, it was the first war characterized by the military's intense curation of its media coverage. The combination of then-advanced AI systems and the carefully curated reporting beamed back to the American and international public led media theorists to describe it as a watershed moment, where weapon systems, imaging devices, and military propaganda converged into a single phenomenon. This led French theorist Jean Baudrillard, author of the book "Simulation and Simulacra," to declare: "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place."

In a world characterized by ever more intense and ever more invasive forms of surveillance, I think about how so many of the systems we rely on every day (the Internet, city streets, smartphones, etc.) are like technological predators, tracking our every move, our every heartbeat, looking for a moment to take a piece out of us. I wanted to create a model that would see a world through the eyes of prey, a model where literally everything it could see was something that was out to get it.

The cosmic horror genre emphasizes a universe that is at once utterly incomprehensible to humans and utterly indifferent to them. To quote the genre's most well-known author:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

• H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

These models try to imagine a Western medieval worldview, where landscapes, images, objects, and concepts are theological allegories. A vision in which the world of objects is characterized by their theological significance.

Albrecht Dürer's Meisterstiche—Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in His Study (1514), and Melencolia I (1514)—are central to the history of allegorical art and were key inspirations for Walter Benjamin's theory of images.

In The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928), Benjamin proposed that allegory is not merely a symbolic or didactic representation but a fragmented, disjointed depiction that reveals the ruins of meaning rather than a direct, unified interpretation. Allegory operates in a space where things stand in for broader concepts but do not seamlessly embody them.

What does it mean to create a dataset and model that holds the question of meaning and non-meaning in a state akin to a quantum superposition, where both exist and do not exist simultaneously?

In the three-part trilogy "Eye/Machine" (2001-2003), the late artist and filmmaker Harun Farocki explored the role of machine vision and automated systems in warfare, surveillance, and everyday life. The films show how machines are trained to "see" through targeting systems, surveillance cameras, and automated production lines—mechanical eyes that reduce the world to calculable, measurable, and actionable data, often without human intervention. He concludes the first film with the statement: 'Thinking of a war of autonomous machines, a war without soldiers like a factory without workers'

Composed of images of deep sea creatures, deep space objects, and the instruments humans have used to explore them, “From the Depths” imagines a world populated by entities by objects and entities that inhabit spaces beyond our everyday perceptions.

The "Interpretation of Dreams" draws on Sigmund Freud's exploration of the unconscious mind. For Freud, images in the surreal and fragmented landscape of dream-life stand in for latent desires, repressed memories, and unconscious conflicts manifest. It includes imagery that reflects the dream-work process as understood by Freud —condensation, displacement, and the transformation of unconscious thoughts into visual imagery.

A model that can see – and can only see – monsters that have historically been allegories for different moments in a capitalist cycle. Vampires as capitalists, zombies as consumers or laborers, octopuses as monopolies, mummies as the historical connection between capitalism and colonization, etc.

A world of entities or phenomena whose existence is defined by absence, lack, or the space around them, rather than by a positive, tangible presence. These are paradoxical types of things, existing as voids, gaps, or openings that shape reality precisely because they are not "things" in the traditional sense.

A model that sees the world as containing only omens and portents. A model that sees signs of danger, change, or transition. A model that sees in the liminal space between superstition, mythology, and cultural belief.

"Other Gods" is trained to see and identify deities and divine figures from mythologies around the world. The model operates under the premise that gods, demigods, and divine entities are ever-present, hidden within the world's imagery, and waiting to be revealed. What if the only reality were divine realities?

A model trained to perceive the world solely through the lens of objects found in Renaissance still life paintings, whose depictions of fruits, flowers, food, vessels, and symbolic items conveyed themes of mortality, wealth, and the transience of life. The model turns the contemporary world into a tableau of Renaissance art.

A world in the distant future. The humans are long gone. Organic forms flow through submerged and subconscious landscapes. A model inspired by the anonymously authored collection of poems "A Natural History of Seaweed Dreams."

"Plankton-fed, sleep-drugged eyes cast down in the direction of the sacred." “Manta rays bloom in cosmic night.”

• Anonymous

This dataset explores the space between human representations and the technologies or extensions we have created. It is eclectic and unpredictable, highlighting both the particularities of human identity and the ways we project ourselves through the images and objects we create. “The Humans” captures a mix of images, ideas, and constructs that serve as reflections or distortions of what it means to be human in a world shaped by technology and fantasy.