Synthetic Image refers here to an image or moving image that is constructed rather than directly recorded from reality. In the provided context, it is contrasted with straightforward AI image generation based on prompts, and instead points to a broader practice of producing fabricated or composed visual material from datasets, models, and computational processes. One passage notes that the most convincing moving images are often the most synthetic ones, while coarse formats such as Hi8 can make their constructed nature visible by emphasizing grain, low resolution, and other signs of mediation.
The term is also connected to practices that treat video as a manipulable temporal volume. By stacking consecutive frames along a time axis and slicing that volume from arbitrary angles, artists can generate images that do not correspond to ordinary playback. These synthetic images emerge from the reorganization of spatial and temporal relations: continuity is disrupted, perspective can shift into parallel projection, and the usual order of time and space is quietly dismantled. In this sense, synthetic image is less about imitation of the real than about reconfiguring perception, duration, and the structure of media itself.
The context does not provide a fully established dictionary-style definition of the term, so this entry is limited to what can be inferred from the supplied passages.