Sea Of Tranquility 2025
Acrylic on canvas
155 x 90
Part of the Brave New World series
This painting features 7 alienated versions of me.
I am not truly at ease with the concept of AI, but as an image creator, I felt the need to know where the future of image creation is heading. So I started my first investigation into AI in Photoshop.
I used a recent picture of myself and simply instructed the conceptual toolbar: ‘’improve‘’. The result of this one instruction was a bit of horror meets a VR-loving alien. A surprising and baffling introduction to AI, but not really a compliment.
I now imagine that in its eyes, my request for improvement could only lead to something that would visually resemble a physical version of itself, just like the creator who created humankind in his own image. As uncanny as this outcome was, it inspired me to create this canvas on which a more sympathetic version of this raw first artificial draft, times seven, rises from a restless sea of tranquillity.
I thank AI for this inspiration, but I am not sure if I will become a frequent flyer, though; probably I will and without knowing that I do, just like the rest of us. She is beyond us.
I’m not sure our lives will get better with AI and all that it embeds and will encapsulate in the future.
If it were up to me (it is not), I would rather live life with all its beautiful, natural imperfections and oddities with the certainty of death than become a servant of a perfect faceless system with a poor imagination.
This painting is handmade.