Simulated Landscapes
2023 - today
The steadily increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence-powered image generating tools is challenging the notion of art. Can works of AI origin be considered as art? The series “Artificial Landscapes” documents this seminal point in art history, raising questions about the process of creating and nature of art.
AI datasets are trained on centuries of human creations. By carefully selecting 19th century landscape paintings for their compositional quality and technical execution as the base of the images, Brunn utilises these datasets to generate the classical motif of a “landscape”. In the hopes of confronting viewers with the timelessness of their own existence, these seemingly untouched scenes of nature cannot be attributed to a point in time and might have existed several thousand years in the past or just as possibly in the distant future.
To reflect the concept of timelessness in the artwork production process, Brunn prints the generated images using the analogue platinotype technique invented in 1873. Due to its main components, platinum & palladium, the platinotype is considered the most durable printing technique, potentially lasting over 1000 years.
Places of Worship
2020 - today
In this series, Brunn captures places of worship, which are the oldest remaining structures on earth, in hopes of understanding humanity’s relationship with its timeless nature.
Inspired by Carl Jung’s archetypes of the collective unconscious, which refer to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts, the artist seeks to capture humanity’s collective memories through the five world religions. The Dharmic and Abrahamic Religions are shown in groups of five, installed from left to right according to their respective time of inception: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. With a strictly center aligned perspective, Maximilian uncovers the symmetry of each structure and its deities.
Following the tradition of Prussian church photographers, Brunn uses an 8 x 10-inch plate camera, from whose negatives he produces handmade contact prints for a lossless way to the image. Wanting to reflect the concept of timelessness in his photographic prints, he utilizes the 19th century technique of platinum/palladium printing, which offers the most archivally stable printing process. Prints created using this technique can last for over a thousand years without any loss of quality. The product of this printing process transforms a moment captured into a more everlasting, timeless object.
Untouched Landscapes
2018 - 2020
Places seemingly untouched by human hands, photographed between 2018 and 2020 in Japan and New Zealand. The aim was to show landscapes that cannot be attributed to a clear point in time, and might have existed several thousand years in the past as well as in the future.
