FUTURE MANIFESTOS – Konferanse
DIGS, Krambugata 2 / 10. & 11. APRIL, 10:00 – 14:30
Gratis inngang.
Kurator: Zane Cerpina
Human Error
In this talk, I will present Human Error, a small series of oil paintings based on deliberately broken AI images of the human figure. The project began as a practical experiment and quickly turned into an obsession with the moments where synthetic realism slips – where a tool that normally tries to look effortless suddenly reveals its shortcuts. Instead of fixing those artifacts, I treated them as the point: something worth slowing down, committing to, and translating into a physical object that can hang on a white wall and hold attention.
I’ll walk through the methods I used to generate the source images and how I selected what was worth painting. The focus is not a software tutorial, but an artist’s perspective on technique: how you push a system toward failure, what kinds of failures feel meaningful rather than random, and how composition and “taste” still matter even when the starting point is machine-generated. I’ll also talk about what changes when the image moves from screen to oil paint – how permanence, labor, and material decisions alter the emotional temperature of something that might otherwise be dismissed as a disposable glitch.
Alongside the process, I’ll share anecdotes from showing the work and the range of audience reactions it tends to produce. Some viewers read the distortions as disturbing or grotesque, others find them strangely tender, and many oscillate between attraction and discomfort. Those responses are part of the work’s subject: not just what the tools can do, but what we bring to images of bodies, beauty, and error.
Ultimately, Human Error is a way of looking at generative AI without pretending it’s neutral or inevitable – using its failures as a lens on our current image culture, and on what happens to the human figure when it is reconstructed through a system trained on the internet’s idea of what people should look like.
Syver Lauritz [NO]
Syver Lauritz (b. 1990) is a Norwegian multidisciplinary artist, designer, and creative technologist based in Oslo. Educated at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), his work moves between physical craft and computational image-making, with a long-standing interest in what happens when technology bends, breaks, or reveals its seams.
After his master’s work (2015) explored “damaged” digital materiality through warped and broken 3D scans in a VR prototype, he went on to work across exhibition design, digital design, motion and animation, game design, and creative technology. He later served as a creative lead at TRY Dig, while continuing to develop a parallel studio practice.
Lauritz first became known to a wider audience through Portrettmesterskapet, reaching the semi-finals as a completely unknown hobby painter. Since then, he has held two solo exhibitions: his debut at Galleri HER (summer 2024), followed by Human Error at Grafills hus (April – May 2025). A third solo exhibition is scheduled in Oslo in May 2026.
Today, he runs an independent practice spanning commissioned work and self-initiated art, drawing on a background in design, marketing, and creative technology. He works across multiple mediums and formats depending on context – from commercial productions to studio-based painting.
