E9 Children Playing (figure 6) employed a similar generative process involving Platnic’s drawings and photographs, but with a higher degree of control over the iterations. The starting point for this work was Picasso’s Claude and Paloma Drawing (1954), which Platnic remade in watercolor as an “augmented Picasso,” adding an urban background. While the reference to Picasso is not as easily identifiable as the Bosch reference in Tammuz, it remains a potent entry point into a dystopian universe. As in Tammuz, the generative process was applied separately to distinct elements—background, trees, a sunflower, and the two children— which were later recombined. The painterly quality is evident in Platnic’s hand-painted elements and in the visual aesthetic of the generated images. In turn, the AI avatar introduces a sense of estrangement, generating various distortions of the human body and the surrounding environment. Platnic’s recourse to Picasso in this context of pending catastrophe was triggered, he says, by the figures of Picasso’s children, Claude and Paloma, who were similar in age to his own children at the time. In Platnic’s words, Figure 3. Michel Platnic, After "Boy Lying Down" (Erich Lederer), 2020. Video UHD.
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