Humans are technological beings. We invent technologies but we are also continually and inevitably transformed by those technologies, as media theorist Marshall McLuhan reminded us. Technologies change the way we interact and experience the world. There are certain technologies that, when they come along, generate both excitement and concern. AI is one of those. Debates surrounding rapidly evolving AI technologies seem to be everywhere. Polarising views veer from utopian possibility to apocalyptic doom-saying. Academics bemoan the use of ChatGPT by students; politicians campaign for the reform of laws concerning AI and media; and artists of every stripe worry about the impact of new technologies upon their livelihoods and upon creativity itself.
“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”
Marshall McLuhan
Into this volatile conversation steps photographer, publisher and film-director Rankin. He has created both a print magazine and accompanying exhibition called Faik & Faik Off, currently showing at Annroy Gallery until June 26th. AI’s ability to generate images has improved rapidly, and the issues around this development as they relate to the art world is what Rankin explores in this latest project. Using software like Midjourney and ChatGPT, Rankin spent nine months testing and experimenting with the technologies and has produced a collection of AI-generated images which interrogate both the creative and cultural implications of AI. The final images look, at first glance, like classic Rankin images, which raises provocative questions about the relationship between AI and art. This blurring of the boundaries between human and technological creation is at the heart of the project.
“The work is my way of asking questions, of tracing the impact of these seismic changes on a craft I love, and maybe, of trying to stay sane in a world that keeps changing shape. Within this magazine you will see (and read) me wrestle with AI, to make sense of it and to bend it to my will. It does bend eventually, but the cost in time and energy is exhausting. I also pivot between enjoying using it and feeling empty, celebrating it and hating everything it stands for. I’m still trying to work it out!” He writes in the magazine. Regarding AI as a rupture in the culture, Rankin has waded into the conversation by using his own artistic genre as a means of inviting viewers to reflect on the implications of these new technologies, upon the arts, upon our lives. The exhibition, arguably a reflection of both his fascination and abhorrence of AI, is divided into sections, each of which features some of the ‘conversation’ between the artist and the technology as the images are developing. This is no small project—the artist cares deeply about this issue and FAIK is a genuine attempt to grapple with some of the key questions that AI and its uses in creative processes generate.
FAIK (For All I Know) is about the erosion of certainty, and an invitation to give a ‘faik’—to care about the arts, the world, and each other. Elsewhere Rankin has claimed that ‘to care is a deeply political act’ in these times, and this exhibition with its accompanying 450-page free magazine is an invitation to see this particular artist’s cares and concerns about technology, his fascination with it and his ultimate protest against it and what it has done, is doing, and potentially might do to the arts on every level, from conception to commerce. If you want a copy of the magazine you can only get one by caring enough to visit the exhibit.
FAIK & FAIK OFF by Rankin
Annroy Gallery
110-114 Grafton Road,
London,
NW5 4BA
Until June 26th
Barry Taylor writes and speaks about the intersections of philosophy, theology and contemporary culture. In past, he was the road manager for AC/DC during the Bon Scott era before becoming a Los Angeles theologian.
