Pavillions

The Pavilion project presents a series of eerily evolving virtual structures and spaces, haunted by real photographs. They all began life as real photographs of various modernist buildings and abandoned places, originally taken by me with an optical camera. Many were part of my illusory architectural series called Everything is Real (2020). The source photograph was then iteratively altered using #midjourney’s editing facility, until the construction represented is a pure #simulacrum.

Pavilions are (often temporary and decadent) buildings created merely for entertainment - they often have no practical utility - much like these virtual structures. The word is from French pavillon (Old French paveillon) and it meant a small palace, from Latin papilionem (accusative of papilio). In Late Latin and Old French, it meant both ‘butterfly’ and ‘tent’, because the canvas of a tent resembled a butterfly’s spread wings.”

This butterfly-like form is also mirrored in the reflective symmetry of many of these new images.