Detail and Final Installation images,The Wulvermen, 2024, RMIT
The Wulvermen
Antique picture frame, 3 x A5 digital prints, black card, gold pen.
My Objective with this work was to create a beautiful lie. Not an ugly or obvious lie, not a fake or a phoney, but an illusion, a lie you want to believe.
My method was to generate digital AI images and convert these into analogue photographs.
I used Leonardo.Ai, large and medium format analogue film cameras, an Epson P800printer, Kodak professional digital paper, an antique frame, and a mounting board.
Initially I thought the project was simple; I would transform digital AI images into analogue. However, I realised that when AI generates, it sources images from the internet and that these images were placed there by humans. So really, the process is analogue to digital to analogue.
Most of this work was created and presented on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. I pay respect to their Elders past and present. I acknowledge and honour the unbroken spiritual, cultural and political connection they have maintained to this unique place for more than 2000 generations.
Detail images,The Wulvermen, 2024, RMIT
I chose this title for these images as I was intrigued by the story behind them. The Wulver according to Jessie Saxby's Shetland Traditional Lore was “a creature like a man with a wolf’s head.” There is a lot of suspicion around the authenticity of the Wulver as there is no folkloric tradition about them before the entry in Saxby’s book.
There is, however, a long tradition in European folklore of hairy folk, generally of short stature, that are benign or helpful, and often associated with fishing, as the Wulver reportedly were. In Scottish folklore, these folk were known as “Brownies” or, in Gaelic, “Urusig.” David MacRitchie writes “…because various terms and descriptions, applying to those uruisgean, show that they were actually "shaggy men."
The Wulvermen have evolved from a seed of folkloric truth, but are probably an invention, a lie - a fitting backstory for this project and, hopefully, a beautiful one.