‘NoMansLand – Re-constructions of the Artist as a Young Human (2023-)’ is a new mixed-media collection of work where I explore boundaries and reevaluate my own artistic viewpoint and process.
By feeding my past works into AI, I deconstruct it, allowing me to view it through a new lens. Shifting the focus and examining it in a new context. I rework the results of the AI into a new and original artwork through digital manipulation, print and paint. An AI-assisted collaboration between my current and former self.
This selection of works are part of a bigger world, ‘NoMansLand’, where the subjects of the portraits exist in the intersectionality between art and technology. They represent my own experience being part of the Xennial micro-generation. The generation with the analogue childhood and digital adulthood.
I find AI fascinating, as in a very short period of time it went from being fun and exciting, to creating mass contempt and fear of the loss of income, plagiarism, security and artistic integrity.
I choose to use AI in this collection as it lets me see my work from a different perspective. It influences my decision process, while I still maintain and assert artistic control. It allows me the privilege of exploring freely without my historic artistic bias and boundaries, while utilising the technology as a vehicle rather than a destination. To me
AI is a tool, and technology only has the power we choose to give it. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it is human authority that directs it.
The name of the collection is a reference to ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ is a title both used by Rembrandt and James Joyce. Both artists’ work use self-reflection as experimentation and pushed boundaries within their respective fields using modern techniques to further their artistic outputs.
