Modern simulation hyperreality simulacra via Ai in the life cycle of a nation state empire. "Bone Flag" is a simulation of a model of film and digital photos of deer, springbok, blesbok, pig and cow bones with the US flag and the sky in the background. It was trained and generated from a StyleGAN 2 model using photographs taken by the artist. "Vanishing of the Genuine" explores the beauty of bone and sky in life, death and simulation using analog film photography and AI as inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's bones in the New Mexico sky and Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality. The beauty of the bone floating in the sky with clouds and trees exposes the human perception of the world and the alterations of technology in the form of artificial intelligence. But these bones and the Ai model hold the promise of immortality, the bone outlasts death and perhaps we hope the simulation / simulacra of our creation will also be immortal. Bård examines the authenticity of artifacts by juxtaposing bones, their photographs and AI generated images, questioning the transition from reality to symbol to simulation to simulacra. Through the stages of an AI simulation and process a new reality is constructed. Process The process to create Bones was to gather animal bones from ethical suppliers, but one key deer skull was found on the side of the road. These bones were photographed with analog film cameras against the backdrop of the sky. The developed film was scanned and Photoshop was used to remove the filament holding the bone up. The photos were used to train multiple GAN and Stable diffusion models. The process illustrates the progression of the real bone into a physical representation on film, then digitized into more symbolic systems. The model training turned the images of the bones into a simulation that can recreate any sort of bone and the background of the sky. A final stage for a rare few tokens was to image the digital Ai image back onto analog film. These images tip into simulacra where the image no longer refers back to any real or even symbolic bone but exists in a self-referential loop of images. The art of "Bones" fall into four stages of representation. It begins with the real physical bone - Reality First the film photograph represents the symbol, a reflection of reality - Symbol Second the film is digitized and edited to remove fishing line hanging bone in the sky - Distorted Symbol Third the AI images generated from the model - Simulation Absence Of Reality Fourth the AI images processed on film and model trained from first order model. A self-referential entity, creating a hyperreal world where the distinction between reality and simulation is obliterated - Simulacra It is of note that the models were not completely trained on film photos. About 1,500 photos were created using analog film of Olympus Pen EE-3, Mini Diana and Nikon A8008 . Around 500 were digital photos from an iPhone 12 and the Dehancer app emulated Kodak Gold Film. RIGHTS & LICENSE: The NFT collector receives: Non-exclusive Display rights (private/public) Permission to create remixes and Ai model training with attribution Artist retains reproduction rights, commercial licensing, reproduction rights NFT transfers include digital rights only. Physical print ownership and transfer are separate from NFT ownership. Copyright 2024 Bard Ionson LLC