Scotty So looks into the future with young Benallaites at art gallery

I feel cheated.

When we look to the future, we usually think of a utopia.

Everything has turned out for the best, and space-age technology has made all our problems disappear.

But is that the outlook that young Benallaites have today?

An art project by one of Australia’s most promising up-and-coming artists will provide insight into what the youth of Benalla and Melbourne think their lives will look like in 50 years.

The PHOTO 2024 International Festival of Photography announced its program on November 22, with 100 free photography exhibitions set to hit the streets and galleries of Melbourne and Victoria from March 1 to 24.

Centred on the theme ‘The Future is Shaped by Those Who Can See It’, the festival will feature 150-plus photographers and artists from over 40 countries who will explore the possible and parallel futures that lie ahead.

Benalla Art Gallery will again participate in the statewide festival with two major exhibitions.

One exhibition is Scotty So’s +50, from March 1 to May 5, which will explore the perspectives and aspirations of young people from diverse backgrounds in Benalla and Melbourne.

With the help of AI processing, each of the participants will be presented in large-scale portraits, imagining them in their old age, offering a platform for the young voices to be heard, encouraging reflection on the changing world and our place in it, as well as on ageing and the impact of time on our lives.

The reporter becomes the subject

When Benalla Art Gallery director Eric Nash told me I was in the right age range to sit for a portrait with Scotty, I jumped at the opportunity.

Finally, that art history degree at university was bearing fruit.

So, on the second morning of December, I found myself doing something I’d never thought I would — signing a model release form.

My dentist once told me that unless I wanted to be Zoolander, I didn’t need to get jaw surgery.

“The joke’s on him”, is all I could think as I crossed the Ts and dotted the Is.

Scotty was vibrant and ready to start the interview, and after a few technical difficulties with the microphones, we got under way.

We talked about my background, my job as a journalist and how I think it will have changed in 50 years’ time.

We were both optimistic that the future would be better despite an underlying anxiety that things would not turn out as we hoped.

And then, just like that, the interview was over, a camera lens was clicking, and more flashes were going off than in a lightning storm.

I suddenly forgot how to control my face when Scotty asked me to pose.

How would I want my hypothetical grandchildren to see me in 50 years? With a massive toothy grin or looking off into the distance like the portrait of some important general.

But before I could decide, Scotty had got the shot.

Even on the small camera display, the portrait was one of the best photos I’d seen of myself.

How does he do it?

With the shoot over, it was my turn to ask the questions.

One-on-one with Scotty So

Hamish: “So we sort of went over this in my interview, but what was your inspiration for this project?”

Scotty: “My gallerist wanted me to try with some more regional galleries and last year, I’ve been to many regional galleries for different programs and really loved how regional towns in Victoria (provide an) environment (that) is so beautiful.

“The people are so much kinder.

“Melbourne people are hard to please; they’re more critical. I’m not saying that the regional townspeople are easy to please, but they’re just more kind and gentle.

“They really appreciate you when you are trying to do something related to the town.

“I find that so beautiful a lot of the time, and when I am invited to do these things.

“There was this opportunity with the photo festival, and the organisation said they would love to see me creating a new body of work that is related with other people rather than just using myself.

“I used to use myself (as the subject of artworks) a lot because I find that is easier to get what I want to say across.

“Having other people in modelling, a lot of time, it’s like they are scared of the camera.”

Hamish: “I can definitely relate to that.”

Scotty: “If I am the model, I don’t need my own consent.

“With these (projects), it is so much easier to deal with, but I thought it was a good chance to step out of that comfort zone and think about something that could be meaningful with the community.

“I knew the theme of the year was related to the future, and I just kept thinking, what can I do with this title?

“And I thought, oh! AI is coming now, but I don’t like AI art.

“I love some of my friend’s AI art. There’s an aesthetic that they created that is distinguished from the AI art that you can tell is AI.

“Yeah, but a lot of time, when people touch on AI, you can tell there’s a certain aesthetic in the photo, and you can tell they (the artist) AI generated it.

“There’s this part where (with) AI, you type in the prompts, and I thought that was very much like a designer way of creating, and I’m really not so much of a fan of it because I think that this is a medium (AI imagery) that the work isn’t so much about the medium, but more using the AI just as a tool.

“If the AI can do it with an image and a designer with the same prompt can create something similar, then what’s the point of using AI?

“AI has to create (an) extra meaning to the work, and so in this case, I thought AI isn’t just about a prompt. It’s also about data collection and facial recognition.

Hamish: “So, how will you use AI in this project?”

Scotty: “There’s Snapchat, and there are different apps for people to play with to make them look beautiful or make them look different.

“In this case, it’s the ageing one, and it’s pretty much using the app that everyone could use as well.

“But in this case, I find that if I do the photo shoot properly, in a still setting, there is already an aesthetic to the images.

“Then, to bring them all (up to a) large scale, It’s going to be quite impactful.

“AI doesn’t give me the resolution I need for this scale, so I need to use AI to make the image larger.

“Still, it would create this image that looks very blurry and smooth, but then it’s almost like a filter or like a dream, a vision of that aged person.

“So, I realised that I could combine two images.

“The current ones that I haven’t touched, and then the other one is the AI-generated one, yeah, and when I combined the two together, you see this really hyper-realistic image of an old person.

“So when you walk into the space, you see an image of an old person, but as you walk closer to the photograph itself, you can see the details of the young person underneath.

“I thought that is quite a fun way to talk about the future, including the community, including young people, and actually giving the voices a chance to be heard.

“In the interviews I’ve done, I’ll cut them into fragments and play them not all together, but I’m thinking like one answer following another answer from the different people, so there’s not a certain narrative of what they are saying, but it’s just different voices saying different things.

“All of the interviews I have done already, none of them are the same.

“They are all individual, and I find that it’s something I’m really excited for with this project.”

Hamish: “I’m going to flip the script on you here. Where do you see the future?”

Scotty: “I don’t really think about it a lot, actually, because I’ve always had the anxiety that this year I’ll have cancer or always thinking that I’ll die soon.

“When I was young, I thought I wouldn’t make it to 25, and then I thought I would make it to 27 now. I feel like I’m gonna live.

“I’m always busy and working working working, and a lot of the time, I see the constant moment rather than focusing so much on the future.

“There’s a lot of anxiety for sure of, you know, how the world is going.

“Everyone’s feeling powerless. There’s nothing we can do, but at the same time, I feel like if I just do good on my part, even though I can’t do a lot to change, but if I do my good and everyone else also does that, I think it would be better.

“I find that Gen Z is much more caring about their environment, much more caring about their surroundings and people’s feelings especially.

“We are more sensitive as well in our generations, but it could be a good thing to respect other people’s feelings much more.

“In our generation, we just don’t have the ability to buy property. That’s not the goal.

“I think that’s gotta be something good.

“We’re not as materialistic.

“I think this is a good way to change the world.”

Hamish: “I think just a good little final question is what inspired you photography-wise? Why that media? What drew you to photography?”

Scotty: “I basically do everything.”

Hamish: “Yeah, you’re all about multimedia, but is to you, is it the one? Do you have a favourite media? Is it photography?”

Scotty: “I don’t really have a favourite media.

“I find that different mediums tell different stories.

“With photography, to me, it is the immediate truth of the image.

“I think (photography) contains this authority of truth because it’s something that shows a realistic image of a person, but it’s not that realistic.

“It is the closest thing to a replica of a person.

“I think it’s when you manipulate the image it creates a different truth.

“I’ve got portraits that I’ve done and put them on Wikipedia and said they were from (a certain) time.

“Like a 1930s Melbourne burlesque performer, and then people believed it was real and started using the picture to sell prints because it was in the public domain.

“In this way, I can manipulate the image, and it’s crazy storytelling, and different other mediums don’t contain the same thing.

“If I were to do painting, I could be really free on the subject, and photography is hard to do something like that, and so to me, it has this sort of agency.

“It has this authority, this truth of the information that is contained in images.

“I’m not the best at anything, but I love doing everything.”

Hamish: “You’re a jack-of-all-trades.”

Scotty: “Yes, so that’s why I chose photography this time.”

Before Benallaites get the opportunity to see what the youth of today will look like in 50 years, The PHOTO 2024 festival will kick off at the Benalla Art Gallery with the Laresa Kosloff: New Futures™ exhibition, which will run from February 23 to April 28.