Do Pictures Lie? A Journey Through Contemporary Visual Culture

The seminar takes the recent discussions surrounding deepfakes and other AI-generated images as a starting point to explore the credibility of images in social media, the arts and the sciences. What criteria determine whether images are considered credible? To what extent does this depend on the contexts in which they appear? Are there specific staging strategies that make images appear particularly truthful? How can I recognise fakes such as deepfakes?

With these (and other) questions in mind, the seminar takes a journey through our contemporary visual culture, whilst also looking back at history. Following the initial introductory seminar sessions, the remaining topics for the semester will be agreed upon collectively.