THING - Leafy

While the LUMENO project explores the physicality of light through prisms and photographic recording, the THING series shifts the focus toward objects—photographed in their given form, then subjected to AI-assisted mutation. Here, the object is not preserved but continuously undone by the deliberate provocation of the AI system to deviate, to expose its own unstable grammar of recognition. The process generates shifting morphologies where styles break, merge, or collapse, producing fractured hybrids that resist stable classification. Glitches, distortions, and unexpected leaps are not concealed but amplified, becoming part of the visual language. In this way, THING creates a cataloof object-variations that are as much about AI’s interpretative logic as about the objects themselves. Sound plays an equal role. Each variation is accompanied by its own acoustic layer—sometimes noise, sometimes rhythm, sometimes voice-like tones—scored to follow the pace of transformation. These sounds extend the mutations into another register, giving each altered object a distinct sonic identity. THING is less about the authority of the artist or the coherence of the original form, and more about creating a stage where objects are exposed to the volatility of algorithmic imagination.

Anka Poludov’s work merges experimental photography, glass art traditions, and contemporary moving-image practice. Her visual language is informed by the Czech avant-garde photographic tradition—known for its abstraction and material experimentation—and by the Czech art glass movement of the 1970s, which transformed glass into a medium for sculptural and conceptual art. She studied fine arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she developed a conceptual approach to painting, video art and photography, and later completed cinematic studies at the University of Southern California, expanding her practice into time-based narrative media. Poludov’s current projects, including the Lumeno series, continue this trajectory: investigating light as a tangible medium, merging handcrafted optical elements with advanced image sequencing to create infinite spectral loops.