Artist Notes

 

Currently my practice is conversing with AI. This research aims to understand what it means to be human in the face of technology attempting to simulate humanity. I’ve been subverting the intended usage of AI-generative imaging software by using it as a tool to generate the unknown rather than what one describes. I enter nonsensical prompts, such as gibberish, or words that the software explicitly says to avoid using, such as 'make', 'change', 'add' or 'fill'. I then use the resulting generated imagery as layers within painterly works that fuse physical, digital and mechanical painting practices.

 

Some works are realised as a flat, sculptural form in the shape of a scribble from the artist’s hand made through machine cutting. Each piece is printed on one side, and painted in layers on the reverse, signifying the compression and flattening of information that we absorb in digital screens. The works reflect on the abstraction of meaning in digital landscapes.

 

Throughout this process of AI dialogue, images of faces have emerged from the software like apparitions of uncanny ghosts. Overtime, I’ve responded to these figures as avatars, inspired by my childhood of playing with dolls, stuffed animals, and computer games like The Sims. I’ve used these faces and the images generated alongside them to make abstract digital portrait paintings of simulated identities. The digital paintings are projected via flatbed printing technology on pre-painted acrylic panels, creating paintings that deceive between hand-made and digital brushstrokes. 

 

Each portrait is accompanied by an audio monologue recited by an AI voice, breathing (artificial) life into the work. The monologues' narratives reference imagery in the paintings, which function like symbolic ‘easter eggs’ for the audience to find and piece together. This is done in reference to the way pop culture fandoms, such as ‘Swifties’, hunt for ‘easter eggs’ to understand celebrity's identity ‘lore’ more intimately, forging para-social relationships through collective mythos. The narratives are fictional tales of personal anecdotes but aim to extend the dimensionality of the artificial identities and animate them into a place of the uncanny.

 

This research reflects on our pursuit for meaning, connection and truth in the digital age, revealing how technology simultaneously disconnects us from lived reality, while bringing us closer together through shared narratives, fantasy and collective world-building.