Autofiction
Artist-Led Audio Guide
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Broadway between 41st and 49th Streets
New York, NY 10036
Start:
Dec 1, 2024
End:
Dec 30, 2024
On View 24/7
Laurie Simmons
View Public Programming
In December 2024, artist Laurie Simmons takes over the screens of Times Square with Autofiction, a series of AI-generated vignettes featuring a shape-shifting cast of women. As they appear in domestic scenes, indoor pools, city centers, and desolate open roads, the only commonality between the women is that they’re all looking upwards.
Simmons works with AI platforms DALL-E and Stable Diffusion to construct real and imagined scenes from her own life, shaping the generated imagery with experimental prompts and marking a new development in her methodology. While Autofiction embraces new AI technologies, the work draws on Simmons’ decades-long photography practice of staging scenes that mine childhood memories and media constructions of gender roles, charged with an eerie, dreamlike quality.
"I was used to collaborating with toymakers, makeup artists, body painters, and Photoshop editors, as well as sourcing images from the Picture Library. In July 2022 I started using AI text-to-image models, which I began calling ‘My Collaborators’, as the images we made together fit so seamlessly into the continuum of all my work.I love the way this new work finds a space between painting, photography, drawing and sculpture.” — Laurie Simmons
Support for Midnight Moment is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and the Times Square Advertising Coalition, with additional in-kind support from the Times Square Edition Hotel.
Midnight Moment is made possible by the Times Square Advertising Coalition, ABC SuperSign, American Eagle, Big Outdoor, Branded Cities, Clear Channel, Coca-Cola, Diversified, Express, Heritage Outdoor Media, Levi's, LG, Line Friends, McDonald's, Microsoft, Midtown Financial, Morgan Stanley, New Tradition, Outfront, Paramount, Prudential, Sensory Interactive, Sephora, Sherwood Equities, Show + Tell, Silvercast, Swatch, TSX, and T-Mobile.
In December 2024, artist Laurie Simmons takes over the screens of Times Square with Autofiction, a series of AI-generated vignettes featuring a shape-shifting cast of women. As they appear in domestic scenes, indoor pools, city centers, and desolate open roads, the only commonality between the women is that they’re all looking upwards.
Simmons works with AI platforms DALL-E and Stable Diffusion to construct real and imagined scenes from her own life, shaping the generated imagery with experimental prompts and marking a new development in her methodology. While Autofiction embraces new AI technologies, the work draws on Simmons’ decades-long photography practice of staging scenes that mine childhood memories and media constructions of gender roles, charged with an eerie, dreamlike quality.
"I was used to collaborating with toymakers, makeup artists, body painters, and Photoshop editors, as well as sourcing images from the Picture Library. In July 2022 I started using AI text-to-image models, which I began calling ‘My Collaborators’, as the images we made together fit so seamlessly into the continuum of all my work.I love the way this new work finds a space between painting, photography, drawing and sculpture.” — Laurie Simmons
Support for Midnight Moment is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and the Times Square Advertising Coalition, with additional in-kind support from the Times Square Edition Hotel.
Midnight Moment is made possible by the Times Square Advertising Coalition, ABC SuperSign, American Eagle, Big Outdoor, Branded Cities, Clear Channel, Coca-Cola, Diversified, Express, Heritage Outdoor Media, Levi's, LG, Line Friends, McDonald's, Microsoft, Midtown Financial, Morgan Stanley, New Tradition, Outfront, Paramount, Prudential, Sensory Interactive, Sephora, Sherwood Equities, Show + Tell, Silvercast, Swatch, TSX, and T-Mobile.
Broadway between 41st and 49th Streets
New York, NY 10036
Nightly, 11:57pm – 12am
Still courtesy of the artist
Laurie Simmons is an internationally recognized artist. Since the mid-70s, she has staged scenes for her camera, creating images with intensely psychological subtexts and nonlinear narratives. By the early 1980s, Simmons was at the forefront of a new generation of artists, predominantly women, whose use of photography began a new dialogue in contemporary art. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, all in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Hara Museum in Tokyo; and the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam, among others. In 2018–19 her retrospective Big Camera/Little Camera was presented at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. In 2006 she produced and directed her first film, The Music of Regret, starring Meryl Streep, Adam Guettel and the Alvin Ailey 2 Dancers. The film premiered at the Museum of Modern Art. Her feature film MY ART premiered at the 73rd Venice Film Festival and Tribeca Film festival in 2017. Simmons lives and works in New York and Connecticut.
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Laurie Simmons
