The film The First Image of the World, entirely made with artificial intelligence (AI) tools, belongs to a research-creation trajectory exploring our fundamental relationship to images. The intentions François Giard deploys in this work revolve around a deep philosophical critique and an exploration of the effects of contemporary visual saturation on human consciousness, revealing the multiple dimensions of an artistic practice that aims to be at once diagnostic, reflexive, and transformative.

Iconemia as a contemporary pathological condition

The film's central intention is to make iconemia visible and thinkable — defined as the pathological condition of image-forming consciousness in a world saturated with technical images. The work seeks to show how today's technological revolution merely reveals, with new acuity, our constitutive vulnerability to images. In this sense, the film does not simply illustrate a contemporary phenomenon; it aims to diagnose a deep disturbance in the psychic economy of representation, in which the self-image is destabilized and subjected to constant flows of mediatization.

The choice to use generative AI to make this work is a deliberate conceptual act. The intention was to denounce iconemia by using the very medium that propagates it — to fight fire with fire. This paradoxical strategy rests on the observation that AI-generated images are the purest manifestation of iconemia — purely technical images without a real referent — and are therefore the ideal tool for revealing this pathological condition. The film thus operates through a productive ambivalence: it participates in the very phenomenon it seeks to critique, while exposing the mechanisms of that participation.

The question of the first image and the foundation of selfhood

The film is built around a fundamental philosophical question and develops a specific hypothesis about the origin of our relationship to the visual world. Its central hypothesis holds that the first image of the world is necessarily the image of oneself. This exploration is not mere metaphysical speculation; it belongs to a broader reflection on the foundations of human culture and relational capacity. Giard posits that the self-image is the bedrock of all empathy, since empathy requires a stable image of oneself in order to simulate and understand the experience of others. This anthropological dimension of the work reveals the existential stakes of the contemporary destabilization of the self-image by iconic saturation.

Aesthetic resistance and the pedagogy of the image

Beyond its diagnostic dimension, the film develops artistic and pedagogical intentions aimed at cultivating a critical consciousness toward digital images. The choice of a dreamlike aesthetic — grainy black and white, floating movements — stems from a precise conceptual intention. By using AI to simulate the inner imaginary and the dimension of dream, the film seeks to reverse the usual process by which technical images colonize our imagination. This reversal thus functions as a form of poetic resistance to iconemia, proposing a counter-hegemonic use of the very technology that participates in the pathological condition.

The inclusion of historical philosophers — notably Schopenhauer, Kant, and Simondon — discussing the first image of the world reflects the author's intention to engage in a meditation on transmission and memory. The use of these digital avatars, while it raises important ethical questions, aims to extrapolate what these thinkers might have said in the face of our contemporary condition. This strategy of digital resurrection does not seek to deceive the viewer about the authenticity of these presences, but rather to expose the constructed nature of all representation.

Critical immunization and existential questioning

The film deploys a strategy of cultural immunization against epistemic naivety toward images. By exploiting its own constitutive ambivalence — participating in iconemia while diagnosing it — the work seeks to question our spontaneous belief in the truth of images. The transparent use of AI as a creative tool seeks to immunize the viewer against the naive belief in the truth of generated images, recalling that every image is construction, mediation, and artifice. This critical pedagogy does not rest on moralizing denunciation, but on a reflexive exposure of the mechanisms by which technical images are produced and received.

The film's ultimate intention is not to provide a definitive answer to the questions it raises. By posing the question of the first image, the work instead seeks to force viewers to confront their own existential position: "What image do we want to be?" This question makes clear that preserving the authenticity of the self-image is the major existential stake of our time. In a world where synthetic images proliferate and algorithms shape our perception, reclaiming a perceptual and representational sovereignty appears as a necessary condition for preserving human autonomy and the capacity to act collectively within an increasingly opaque media environment.