#vs. the multi-thousand-dollar pieces at the art walk that I could neither afford nor justify buying even if I could despite their beauty

[anonymusbosch]

anyway I'm gonna unethically make my mom a painting for christmas! because I'm basing it off a photo I took with my phone's astrophotography setting, which uses AI to more effectively take long exposures (if I had taken the photo with my DSLR, the exposure would have been so long that the stars were visibly moving across the sky or I would need a rotating rig which compensates for the earth's rotation, which i Do Not Have). having thus Contaminated my photograph with AI (stealing from other photographers to train the model!) I will thus painstakingly hand-paint Unethical and Contaminated Art.

I hope - if she has time - that my sister will make me a collage. She'll take inspiration from work by other artists, she'll look at reference images, she'll lean on the instincts and ideas she's built up over her lifetime of looking at other people's art, and then she'll cut up magazines and old newspapers and she'll print out things she likes and she'll cut and assemble them into a novel whole. If she gives it to me I will not know where she sourced any given piece of paper OR any idea about composition or subject or structure. But, it will still be Her Creation and in it I will see all of her fingerprints alongside the unacknowledged fingerprints of the photographers whose photos she collected. It will be a product of her vision and I can rest assured that all her theft is ethical since she used a scissors to do it.

certain AI art discourse is funny to me because some of my favorite artwork in the real physical world is collage - literal cutting and pasting of other people's work (photos, writing, graphic design, paintings) without credit. my sister makes fantastic collages and I would hang dozens in my home if I could. and some that I've seen in galleries or artwalks have been incredibly impactful juxtapositions (thinking of a couple at the Native American photography exhibit this weekend but also some at the Brewery Artwalk the weekend before, just because they're on the top of my head).

but yeah. there's a work of my sister's that's hanging in my dad's house that I've wanted for myself for ages. cut-and-paste.