ART interview by DONATIEN GRAU artwork by ED ATKINS what is love in the age of avatars, artificial intelligence, and synthetic identity? through the eyes of english artist ed atkins, does it stop at scary soliloquies and abject solipsism? DONATIEN GRAU — You’ve created synthetic images of individuals in your films. Can these figures love? Is love a purely human thing? ED ATKINS — I don’t think of them like that: as “them.” They’re models, and their constitution — computer-generated data, weightless naught — is never really to be forgotten. Ciphers, then? Or perhaps, like tropes, the figures are devices for allegory or something? They are for me — initially, at least. To model things, and in their overt insufficiency, I’ve come to rely on their and the videos’ capacities to perform sentiment to excess. So, I don’t think something like love figures directly — more as something unavailable to…