DIGITAL LEARNING
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ?
AI : the artist ’ s friend or foe ?
Charley Openshaw , Head of Art
Half excited , half apprehensive , a bespectacled , long in the tooth art teacher glances curiously at the gaggle of art school students at the welcome desk . They , in return , peer through long , uncombed locks at the strange gentleman who has come to visit their end of year exhibition . Little did they know that he was once like them , equally well-haired and eager for the opportunities presented by studying fine art .
I had arrived at a prestigious London art college to see the work of a recent Old Sennockian , ready to be affronted by the lack of drawing or to tut over reliance on easily accessible , quick-fix technology . Might AI already be impacting how young creatives articulate their ideas ? Might this greying teacher need to get on board with the latest tech so that he can encourage his own students to exploit the opportunities it could offer ? I had read with trepidation that creatives were on the defensive . “ Will any writers survive ?” asks Sean Thomas ( Spectator 2023 ). He proposes that ‘ all writing is ‘ a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations ’. The fundamental problem to be solved in writing is how to impart information in the form of words ”. His gloomy conclusion is that the machines are coming for creativity , and they will do it better .
So , I was primed to be wowed , then depressed by this new wave of tech-informed visual brilliance . I was even hoping to come away in head-shaking despondency , looking for a line to take such as the Guardian ’ s Amelia Tait who suggests “ AI could cynically be slapped on to an exhibition like an Instagram filter , a shiny veneer that makes old work seem new ”. However , there was none of that . Yes , there were the obligatory impenetrably conceptual sculptures made from skip-found objects and the mournful portraits that hint at inner turmoil . But gloriously and ubiquitously , there were paintings and drawings . Imagery that can only be wrought from the artist ’ s struggle with ideas , technique and messy , wet media . These young artists were grappling with the same challenges that a blank canvas presented Rembrandt and with much the same materials . Yes , they doubtlessly use the megapixel wizardry of an iPhone camera , but didn ’ t Vermeer exploit the magic of a camera obscura ? Thomas finds little solace in the appeal of human emotion in “ rough artisanal pottery , and … wobbly vernacular architecture ” but perhaps he needs to spend more time with young artists ? Their determination to overcome the struggle with their practice is profound and timeless . To start work on a painting is a journey that demands a struggle ; creative decisions require that wobble of emotion .
But is that too much of a purist ’ s argument ? Do I undermine my own case with mention of Vermeer ’ s trickery ? And what of Hockney , who has embraced technology from his early faxed “ monoprints ” to his more recent iPad drawings ? Surely artists have always harnessed technological advances to achieve their ends ; didn ’ t the Impressionists need the mass-produced tubes of oil and quick new train lines to be able to paint en plein air ? Some contemporary artists have embraced this thinking . Jonathan Yeo has been in the news as the first portraitist of Charles III in his splodgy , red canvas . He is also , according to his gallery ’ s publicity , inviting viewers to “ question the authenticity of representation in our technologically driven world ” by using scans and algorithms to “ reimagine self-portraiture ”. To some , the
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