The Make Your Mark Collection (Andrew LaCenere)
Artist Statement:
I’ve been interested in the intersection of art and technology for over 2 decades now. Growing up I’d enjoy experimental art exhibits that explored this relationship. In college I wrote a book (unpublished) about how art was a needed, important force capable of ensuring technology remains in a certain balance with the world and humanity itself.
I am a technologist. Technology is magical and can and does continuously make the planet and world better. ‘Technology’ is a capability that technically separates man from beast. But to truly understand technology we must examine it from all sides.
Good technologies are continuously being developed with a benevolent use in mind. Some technologies, though, start as mere scientific discoveries and blossom as their use gets discovered. And, to be true, we must acknowledge that some technologies are created to create outright harm in the world– be that for financial or ideological gain. This last bit shouldn’t frighten us though, it just hints at the simple fact that technology itself is amoral, concerning itself with neither rightness nor wrongness. Misuse of a technical capability is a human problem. We, the humans, must then find a way to contain the side-effects of technology. We must find a way to ask: “What are the costs [of this technology]?”
Technology is a force. It is a force that spreads rapidly. That creates big, huge, incredible changes in the world. Today we have so many incredible technologies, but we also have big problems with things like, say, social media. And now, we have, wait for it, AI !
While I’m not sure that the human species even grasps how to use, say, Facebook without causing extreme, unintended harm, we now have AI ! By all data points examined, it appears that AI will be as big of a technological impetus as the internet itself was, if not bigger. How much has the world changed since people got cell phones? How different will the world be 10 years after the introduction of AI? Will we be healthier, happier, and more free?
I believe that art is deeply personal, deeply individual, and deeply human. It’s 2024 and much of the world now wants to describe AI generated images as art. They are not. By definition they cannot be. Art must be created by humans. It is a mere fingerprint left behind from another human’s experience. A gift created by humans for other humans to experience, and then understand… understand more about another perspective, and more about themselves.
While it is indeed possible for AI to “comment” about the human condition using an image in a truthful and similar way, I believe that it is absolutely important that we preserve the line between actual [human] art, and AI imagery. Like any great technology, there are always costs as well as benefits. Modernity has reaped the benefits of so many incredible technologies, but we must still explore the costs of tech too. Where is the line, where should it be drawn? We must learn how to harness the power of this useful force, and limit its ill-effects, if we want to preserve what is now considered the so-called sacred.
As humanity advances quickly to a future marked by a hyper-capability to alter the world in yet unimaginable ways, I find myself having a strong and growing feeling of nostalgia for a world that may no longer exist. My relationship with the ocean, for example, is nothing short of spiritual, but my relationship with it is quickly changing too. What were once easily experienceable moments are quickly becoming good memories made when they still could be.
What was once the norm may now be the anomaly. What was once easy may now be hard. What we want to see as the same may very well be a mirage of modernity.
“The shrimp here, sadly, are no longer local.” A sad thing to hear when on vacation by the shore.
In this current collection with Albatross my goal is to study the technological distance between our real, digital and synthetic worlds, real and digital memories, and how society reacts to the changes that are now well out of its control.
