[Experiment] I trained a model on childhood photos to simulate memory recall

I fine-tuned the good-old SDXL on 60 photographs from my childhood, using a limited family archive as the dataset through which to revisit that period of my life. Rather than reconstructing those images faithfully, the model produces unstable variations: spaces, faces and fragments that feel familiar without necessarily having existed.

This speculative study treats generative hallucination as an analogue for recollection: not the retrieval of a preserved image, but the reconstruction of a past from incomplete traces. This resonates with contemporary accounts of episodic memory as a reconstructive rather than reproductive process. The model becomes a kind of externalized mnemonic apparatus, situated somewhere between archive, memory and imagination.

Tools used: Kohya, WarpFusion, TouchDesigner, Premiere, After Effects, Ableton Live, Expressive Osmose, Soma Cosmos.

PS: For those of you asking, this is not just “a prompt”. It’s the fine-tuning of the model, the creation of an audio-reactive geometry system in TouchDesigner, and the re-building of WarpFusion for intervining the geometries with the fine-tuned model.

More experiments, project files, and tutorials, through YouTube, Instagram, Patreon, and Uisato Studio.