ARTIFICIAL ARTIST
Art Direction + Editorial DesignWithin the past three years, artificial intelligence has both enamored and terrified almost everyone I know. Most friends and peers were vehemently against the rise of AI, fearing it would skew the workforce, effectively taking away jobs that were already scarce for most artists. Like many creatives, I despised the idea of an ultra-precise and faultless robot readily equipped with tools to replicate everything ever deemed as “good” in this world. I, too, had a moment of defeat. How could we compete against perfection? Then one day, I decided to explore what artists before our time did when faced with a rapidly changing world. I turned to two artists I’ve admired for years, mainly for their futuristic and almost prophetic styles that remain ahead of their time today: Mariko Mori and Micha Klein. These pioneers utilized systems once deemed complex and perhaps even unethical, yet the themes of their work transcend traditional notions of past, present, and future. This editorial contains excerpts from interviews that Mori and Klein have given through both of their respective biographical books.In addition to Mori and Klein, I also interviewed my high school friend, who is currently one of the best “AI artists” I know. We chatted over Zoom and the text was recorded through the AI transcription platform Otter.ai. "Artificial Artist" is an exploration of the hopeful moments of three different artists within a seemingly ever-changing digital dystopia. After all, wouldn’t a true artist be able to weather any fear tactic and technological threat?