Computational Contact Sheets: Synthetic Photography and the Shifting Technical Identity of Comics

My research examines how synthetic photography produced through iterative prompting, dataset modulation, and algorithmic sequencing reshapes the technical structure of comics. Instead of treating comics as an extension of drawing, I approach them as environments where images operate through computation: discretized, indexed, and continuously reconfigured. My work stems from a photographic practice that has moved into an experimental zone where the boundaries between the photographer, the dataset, and the generative model dissolve. In this shared space, the "contact sheet" becomes a conceptual tool for rethinking comics as engineered configurations rather than purely narrative ones. I create grid-based image sequences that hover between photographic study, procedural diagram, and speculative comic. They do not resolve into storylines; instead, they reveal the internal mechanics of machine-driven image formation. Each sequence acts as a small laboratory, showing where the algorithm insists, hesitates, collapses, or invents. Through these experiments, I investigate how machinic subjectivities and computational logics disturb inherited assumptions about craft, authorship, and visual coherence. The project positions comics as research: a medium capable of testing how technical systems transform creative labor, perception, and the aesthetics of sequence. By working with controlled randomness, glitches, and algorithmic drift, I approach the grid not as a narrative scaffold but as an informational space where meaning emerges from the behaviour of images under computational pressure. The presentation will discuss methodology, visual outcomes, and the broader implications of treating comics as technical media shaped by distributed, human–machine authorship.