Vestige explores what remains of a memory. These images were captured long ago by unknown people, and we can only guess how time has changed their stories. Each footage captured a moment meant to be remembered. But what happens to memory over time? It can be manipulated or destroyed, morphing into something else, just like these images.

In this project, found footage is used to visualize time by allowing mold to grow on film slides. Mold is the only archival damage stemming from the film itself, unaffected by any external forces aside from the environment. Typically viewed as a form of decay, mold is reframed here as a means of transformation: something once deemed destructive now creates.

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This research is an attempt to produce images that embody the essence of a ‘Prelinguistic Space’, based on the principles of Saussurean semiotics and Lacan’s signifier and signified theories as a foundation of language structure. The research creates images that defy language justification and categorisation by purposefully taking advantage of the AI generative models weaknesses in producing identical and perfect images and, furthermore, using the older versions of AI generative models and tweaking their configurations to obtain Lacan’s notion of the ‘Real’ —imagery that eludes easy classification by language. These unrecognisable visuals force the human subject—the barred subject—to confront the point at which it cannot link any signifier to the sign, inspiring them to construct their own meaning—a phenomenon that corresponds with both Lacan's signification slippage and Saussure's sign division. This work proposes a new visual encounter and highlights AI's significance in going beyond traditional semiotics and language construction.

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