Eastern Promises - Orientalism and Geography

The Eastern Promises: Preserving Orientalist Painting Through Data Science invites us to consider the role of technology in art and the ways in which it can be utilised to engage in new forms of artistic expression. Art as a meta-discipline is “an umbrella encompassing history, philosophy, nature and science.” The AI-powered paintings presented by Mammadov offer a fresh and innovative take on a timeless artistic tradition, provide a glimpse into the future of art-making in the digital age, and raise crucial questions about polarisation, redefining our rapidly developing world as well as exploring and preserving the social and cultural heritage of humanity, with its own intricacies, in a way that has yet to be decoded by future generations.

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Labelled as the “Orient,” this movement hardly captures the broad swath of territory to which it aims to refer, such as the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia.

In Orientalist art, the East was often depicted as a vast, exotic landscape, characterized by rolling sand dunes, lush palm groves, and towering mountain ranges. These landscapes were often shown in a highly stylised and idealised manner, with images of pristine deserts, crystal-clear oases, and snow-capped peaks.

At the same time, these depictions of geography in Orientalist art were often not representative of the true nature of the East. The East was often portrayed as a homogeneous region, with little attention paid to the vast cultural, linguistic, and geographic differences that exist within the region. This led to a distorted and simplified representation of the East