Ghost town – AI-generated image installation
Ghost town is an AI‑assisted image installation by Giorgio Gerardi that explores the silence of abandoned towns and the ambiguity between documentary evidence and digital fiction.
Through a series of AI‑generated images, the project questions how we construct reality when we look at places we have never visited and stories we have never verified.
In the early 1900s, the town’s population reached around 20,000 inhabitants. Starting in the mid‑20th century, however, it began to empty out, until it was completely abandoned.
The houses still standing, the old hospital, a school, and two factories shape the outline of a ghost town, with no visible signs of life.
The images in Ghost town evoke this suspended condition: a place that seems plausible, historically located, almost familiar.
Image analysis (AI-generated images)
The boundary between reality and fiction has always been a subject of debate, but in the age of fake news it becomes even more fragile and negotiable. Ghost town uses AI‑generated images as a visual metaphor to reflect on how contemporary society constructs and consumes “truth”.
According to the theory of the social construction of reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), reality is not simply given in an objective way but is built through social interactions, language, and cultural discourse. Fake news exploits this principle: it creates alternative narratives that, if shared and believed by enough people, become “true” in a sociological sense, influencing perceptions and actions.
Traditionally, newspapers, universities, and institutions were the main producers of legitimised knowledge. With the rise of social media, this hierarchy has eroded: anyone can produce content with visibility comparable to that of reliable sources. This shift has contributed to a growing distrust in institutions and has flattened the distinction between experts and non‑experts, making it easier for misleading or fabricated information to circulate.
Digital platforms themselves are not neutral. Their algorithms tend to select what is most engaging, rather than what is most accurate. This encourages the formation of echo chambers, in which people are mainly exposed to content that confirms their existing beliefs, reinforcing cognitive biases and polarising public opinion.
Within this context, Ghost town presents a series of images that look like documentary photographs of a real abandoned town, yet are generated by artificial intelligence. The viewer is invited to ask:
Is this place real? Does it matter? To what extent does the emotional impact of an image depend on its factual truth?
The project stages the same mechanisms that allow fake news to take root: plausibility, repetition, and the desire to believe in a coherent story.
Fake news not only spreads false information but also has concrete effects on society: it can influence elections, fuel conspiracy movements, spread fear, and undermine social cohesion. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman described “liquid modernity” as a condition of constant instability and uncertainty; the circulation of manipulated or fabricated content accelerates this fluidity, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between what is true, what is false, and what is simply “viral”.
Faced with this landscape, developing critical thinking becomes essential. It is no longer enough to be able to read and write: we must learn to analyse sources, recognise disinformation strategies, and understand how algorithms guide our experience of the world.
Ghost town inhabits this unstable territory between evidence and invention. By using AI‑generated images to portray an abandoned town, the work shows how easily our sense of reality can be shaped by convincing visuals. In this scenario, the ability to critically evaluate images and narratives is not just an intellectual exercise, but a subtle form of cultural and social resistance.
02 2025