Deeper Meaning

How to Find Meaning? –

Having recently finished 21 days of an augmented reality investigation followed by another 21 days of research paper investigation and compilation, I’m feeling somewhat down. I think that primarily it is due to my investigations into AI generated art. The further I dig into this, the more depressed I become. I’m sure this is just a transient phase. Why am I so sad? It’s because over the years I learnt so much about photography. I collected a wealth of knowledge on this subject especially because each year I tried to present my students with increasingly technically challenging workshops. I was proud that I was able to replicate pretty much any style of photography from slow shutter work to speed shooting, star trails to zoom burst, macro photography to physiograms.

I felt I had reached the pinnacle when I managed to work out the technique that Michael Jackson (the photographer not the pop singer), uses to make his ethereal Luminograms. Even today colleagues are badgering me to give up that secret which I flatly refuse. It’s so beautifully simple yet complex at the same time and I nailed it!

However, with the advent of AI art generation I feel that all of my knowledge is currently under threat. I spent years learning about bokeh and how to create it. Adobe even used some of my work on their Spark Page ‘Wall of inspiration’, but now beautiful blur can be added at the touch of a button. This effect is built into the new iPhone 15 and simply put, a user can now shoot an image and then add the desired level of bokeh after the image is created. I can see a future where there is no longer a need for technical knowledge. Having done my research I also now firmly believe that for those digital artists working purely in 2d they are on borrowed time.

Why am I so pessimistic? I used to love to shoot oil on water photography – it took me hours of experimentation with light and materials and I ‘binned off’ so many more exposures than I ever used. However, that has all gone now, it’s all irrelevant, text to image art is taking over. The quality of results is constantly improving. It’s no longer enough to be a competent photographer or digital artist anymore. Although I try to keep an open mind, (and I stand to be corrected), my feeling now is that the only way forward is to produce art with deep meaning. This has probably always been the case but I believe that it’s even more important than ever in light of the looming shadow of AI.

Beautiful Oil on Water in the Shape of a Triangle

I’m just going to leave the following gallery and images here for the viewer to make up their own mind. I’m not going to say very much about them. My research has led me to believe that in certain circumstances art should be appreciated for its pure aesthetics. I personally enjoyed both creating and working on the images below. The following gallery of work has meaning, but that meaning is hidden but at the same time it’s so obvious.