Hmm, I got this comment on an image that I posted on Facebook, and it got me thinking. I have been on a journey to reimagine some classic images that I love. I’ve called them “tributes” in the past, but lately it’s been “re-image” or “reimagine”.

When I do this I have used lots of media, some digital, some not. It started after my heart attack when for a month or two I went medieval and only used brush and canvas. I had fun, I learned my skills haven’t improved much in portraits. Much better in landscapes.

Then I came to my senses and included my digital skills as part of the process. I would sketch in charcoal, scan the image, add some digital, print, then add some color pencil, then scan to add some more digital. A real mixed media approach.

Some images were very successful to my eye, some failed to meet standards, but so it goes. All is art, some is not good art.

Back to the comment, “That looks like AI”. I’ve been down this road so many times. I remember going down the lane at a street art fair, looking at the various booths displaying art. One booth had dozens of interesting photographs, landscapes, city scenes, portraits…

Above the entrance to the booth there was a sign with bold print, “None of these photos have been touched by PhotoShop!” Uhh, okay?

Soo… these were handmade?

That was a somewhat snarky response, sorry. I spent nearly thirty years teaching Photoshop to people to improve/repair photographs, to create digital art, and to separate photographs for the halftone printing process. It wasn’t a bad thing.

I know the intention of the booth owner. Some people like to adhere to a fixed process. Some like to called it the “traditional tools techniques”. I like it, I like that hard fought knowledge doesn’t disappear. I still like setting lead type, using furniture to lock it in, tighten with a quoin key, hand feed paper into a windmill press. The finished work has a different quality. I love the impression and the smell of the ink. But it isn’t better than the type I see on my iPad! Nor is the iPad better.

I remember visiting some galleries with my early “giclee printed on canvas” digital work. The owner would say, “Oh yes, that looks like computer generated art.” Hmm, was that perceptive or judgmental?

Apparently his clients preferred brush generated art for their dining rooms, providing that the colors match the carpet.

“That’s not art, it’s merely an impression of art.” “Photography takes all the skill out of making pictures”. “No Photoshop here!” “That looks like AI”

All this to say is that humans make tools. Most of the time the tools are improvements in the process. Sometimes that gives the impression that the products are better, and sometimes they are. However, if better tools make worse products then the market will correct itself. Giving a special quality to older techniques is fair, but it shouldn’t limit the progress of tools making newer products.

I loved the historical fact that for thousands of years brushes were all round. They were big and small, and everything in between, but they were all round. It was how brushes were made. Then in the middle of the 19th century, an American invented a metal ferrel for the tip of the brush that was flat. So then we had fan brushes, flat brushes, flat brushes with stiffer bristles. Just in time for the onset of the “plein air” movement, when a lot of paint had to be applied in a short amount of time, because light was changing outside.

But perhaps there were booths with signs saying, “Only round brushes used here”, or “Only fresh ground pigments stored in pig’s bladders here”.

I dunno. We have been trained to fear AI. We have certainly created a lot of media where machines have not been friendly to humans. From “Metropolis” in the 1920s, to Hal in “2001, A Space Odyssey”, and finally in all of the various “Terminator” movies… they gave all of us reasons to mistrust technology and future “artificial intelligence tools”.

And the fact is, that all tools can be abused, because humans are made that way. The fear is that our tools are abusing and using tools in the same way as humans, only better and faster. A complex thought.

Need we become Luddites? In response to automated weaving looms, do we throw our wooden shoes into the machine? Do we throw our sabots, becoming “saboteurs”?

“Looks like AI”, “No Photoshop here” , “Only round brushes used”