AI Art: An Exhibition
A collection of AI art pieces.
October 19, 2025
A painting of a three man mariachi band is playing music in an alleyway. The street is mostly dark except for a few streetlights. The band itself is lit from above by a streetlight and a restaurant window. The band members have wide contageous smiles on their faces. The street is mostly empty except for a group of people dancing by the band. The rest of the painting is darker and duller colors while the band is in bright and vibrant colors. Despite being the focus of the painting, most of the canvas is reservered for the emptiness of the street and surrounding buildings at night to emphasize the band's minute yet impactful presence. The painting is in an impressionistic style focussed on capturing the mood and atmosphere. To show motion, the dancers and band members are shown with gestural brushstrokes, while the street and buildings are shown with more detailed brushstrokes.
Mariachi Band
2024
Wow this one really speaks to me.
Why, I don't get it.
Is this not the essence of humanity: creating something out of nothing? Light from darkness, music from silence, motion from stillness? The human experience is this foundational struggle to create something out of nothing, to bring love to an uncaring world.
I mean I guess, but the artwork is quite juvenile, no? It's merely a few simple sentences describing a scene. It's not even a very good description of the scene.
But can't you see the expression on the band members' faces? Can't you see the motion created by the gestural brushstrokes? It's amazing how so much emotion can be captured by such simple geometries. That's why I like impressionism so much more than realism. Realism is just too literal.
Too literal? This painting is exactly that. It literally says "to emphasize the band's minute yet impactful presence". The painting itself is a literal description of the intended reception of the painting rather than the contents of the scene. The artist has relegated himself to a consumer of the very art he intends to create.
Whatever, you just don't get it. Let's look at this next one.
A painting of a woman in a long wool coat kneeling in front of a soldier holding her baby up for the soldier. The woman is sobbing hysterically and in an act of desperation, she is hoping the solider will protect her child. The surrounding landscape is a cityscape that has been reduced to rubble and debris by bombs. The painting is realistic in style and the colors are muted. Only the one soldier is paying attention to the woman, the rest are hiding behind fallen concrete. The woman and the soldier are standing in the middle of a large clearing in the rubble, showing how vulnerable they are in the face of the chaos.
The Protector
2024
I thought you said you didn't like realism?
Yeah, but this one is different. The realism aids in creating such a candid and powerful scene. War is ugly, and to paint it realistically is to face it truthfully.
I hardly think you can call this art. It's a description of a scene masquerading as something vulnerable. The artist doesn't even grapple with the scene themself, they merely descibe how they want it to make you feel. Through either pure laziness or a lack of skill, the artist only specifies the major decisions in the artwork and leaves the minutia of the gestures, colors, and composition to pure chance.
What do you mean? The artist clearly cares about the scene. You can tell in the way the woman is gripping the soldier's wrist and how the soldier is slightly turned away from the woman, showing how war exists in the liminal space between morality and indifference.
The artist didn't even specify either of those details. You're looking at the grayness of the latent space and attributing it to intention.
You just don't get it.
A photograph of a blanket covering a unspecified object (presumably a body) on a snowy street at night. A few people walk by and clearly ignore the blanket.
No, I want the photograph to be from futher awyway. So it even feels like us, the viewers, are ignoring it.
That's almost right, but I want the blanket to wrap around the body more, so it even looks a bit like a body bag or a shroud.
Forgotten
2025
Oh come on, this is just offensive.
"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."
You can't be serious. This "artist", in trying to portray a sense of isolation and abandonment, has abandoned the very people he is trying to portray. This isn't a commentary on homelessness, this is a fetishization of death.
What? The artist is trying to create awareness of our own apathy toward the suffering of our own neighbors. The composition itself forces us into the perspective that I'm sure you see every day walking down 7th avenue. Look at how intentional the framing is, how the blanket obscures the body in much the same way we obscure these people as we walk by them. I'm sure it took the artist a lot of time and intention to get this piece exactly right.
How tired have we become. How resigned have we become that we don't even demand effort from the content we consume?
What are you even talkimg about?
This is all AI generated "art". How could you possibly say this is art.
Well would you be able to tell that this was AI generated if the title for this exhibition didn't say so? What does it matter how it came to be?
That isn't the point. Art isn't about the end result, it's about...I don't know.
You just sound like an old geezer who can't keep with the times. Think about how much more art we will be able to create now that we have such powerful tools.
I don't want to gatekeep, but shouldn't art be like...I dont know...hard?
I think art should be available to anyone who wishes to make it. Not everyone has the time and money to spend on becoming competent at a medium.
Ok sure, but maybe we should have the time. We all crave self expression, if only we had more time then we wouldn't settle for whatever slop they let us make.
Some of us have jobs you know. And if I want to make a silly video to send to you, then why shouldn't I.
A song; western, country, but not pop country, more like blues folky country; bluegrass, mandolin introduction with guitar for verses. Lyrics are about how life has begun to feel like every second is on the clock. That the rush of work and production has colonized not only our working hours but the hours that were ours. How every day seems faster than the last and it seems like I never get what I want to get done by the time I go to sleep. It's an incessant race to nowhere.
This is almost perfect, but the guitar should be electric, a deeper tone; not quite distorted, but a grumbly thick texture.
On the Clock
2025
Maybe we don't need the time. Maybe we just let go of the need to appear great. Isn't it enough to just to feel great.
You've seen my drawings, they are terrible.
Yes. But I love them. No one could make them as terrible as you.
Oh shut up. You could condition an AI on my drawings and get stupid little drawings all day and you wouldn't know the difference.
But you would.
Why does it matter whether I know, it's a gift for you after all.
All we can give in this life is what we can gift. I'd rather recieve your worst drawing than your best prompt. Creation is the ultimate act of humanity. In a world that expects results yesterday, giving your all today and coming with half the results tomorrow is a true act of courage.
I don't need courage, what I want is to see all of my wildest ideas realized.
It is not the realized that you seek but the realization. In the process of layering on the brush strokes, of plucking the strings of your guitar, you come to know your subject intimately. What lover do you know who seeks to know through a veil. Is is not you who paints the canvas but the canvas who paints you.
A film that explores the intricacies of growing old in a complex society. It should show a young protagonist who thinks things are simple, but as they grow up in this dystopian world, they become entrenched in the complexities of every thing they thought they once knew. Meanwhile there is a challenge that people must accomplish as a rite of passage. The confusing nature of this mythical maze matches the similarly dark and twisted notches of the society which the protagonist must equally explore.
Make the color grading darker and less saturated. The vibe should be more steampunk.
Give the protagonist longer hair, slightly wavy, but dirty.
The Maze
2025
I'm just tired and don't feel like it anymore. When I was a child, sure, but now I don't care enough anymore to put in the effort.
Are you truly content consuming these empty calories. Does producing these apparitions satisfy you. Will this artificial sweetness sustain your soul? I know you're not blind. Although this piece shines like gold, it's just the shimmering wrapping paper over a cardboard box. You can see that can't you? Can't you see that the weight of the prompt hasn't grown, only the volume of its instantiation. Low density content won't ground us.
It can't be just that, look at how complex it is. This is an entire movie playing in front of our eyes. It's not just a prompt.
It takes work to create story, to create order. Where in this movie do you find the work. Work is what makes it worth doing. Work is what makes it worth recieving.
But I don't have time to make a whole movie.
There's a movie that plays out for you every day that you get to write yourself and you'd rather watch one that was spawned from a sentence?
Okay I'll draw you a dinosaur tonight.
I'd love that.
Let's get out of here.