1/4 "Barbarians" by Jacek Markusiewicz impresses me like no other recent work of #GenerativeArt has.
The images of majestic mountain slopes and neatly arranged fields – with occasional buildings strewn in between them – at first feel strangely detached and bland, thanks to a distant, aerial point of view and bleached, bright colours. Yet the way the landscapes are unexpectedly interrupted by smooth, deep, geometrical gashes appears alien and out of place.
2/4 This juxtaposition of nature and incomprehensible architecture gives rise to feelings of awe, wonder and sorrow, and reminds me a lot of what I feel when I look at the artist's previous masterpiece "Hollow", while aesthetic and subject immediately made me think of @monotau's equally astonishing 2022 #fxhash project "Cradle".
3/4 The title implies a hierarchy of cultural development; in the description, Markusiewicz explains how the concept of barbarism always derogatorily refers to "the other". He leaves open who the barbarians are in the context of these images, however.
Are they the people living in the tiny buildings between the invasive structures? Or are the structures the signs of a barbaric intrusion into a peaceful civilization living there? What other interpretations could there be for us?
4/4 Personally, I like to see the outputs as orbital reconnaissance images of a newly discovered world, taken by spacefaring explorers far away from home, as they stumble upon the unmistakable leftovers of an ancient, advanced civilization.
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