Dean Byington - Ahead of AI Art

Etching style imagery invites us to trust it, as though a time honored image existed for centuries. A stark contrast to sharing modern day ephemeral digital images that exist only in digital bytes. Today’s digital renderings of filtered reality appear to oppose antiquated printing methods and call into question the viability of the image and how much if anything about it is real. Ironically, Dean Byington’s images present an analog version of today’s digitally enhanced images, completely faked but believable just the same. As artists, we contextualize our creations. Even Degas' aspirational ballerina sketches enhance reality. We do not see the heavy exhaustion in the eyes of the tireless dancer. Only her weightless graceful gesture implies she awoke blissful, free of all struggle, well rested and smelling of roses. Unlikely for the life of women in the late 1800’s, Degas drawings suggest he filtered reality. In a new era of AI that creates facsimiles of facsimiles is the joke on us or the machine that made it? AI offers filters resulting in renderings void of context. Byington knows that we take comfort in etching. His choice roots his work in that of the “human” experience and not the “machine” for with out human context how could the machine know we crave the comfort & assurance that comes with 600 year old tech. Only should AI evolve to own its experiences would it truly equal the human artist, able to contextualize independent of us.

Omphalos, Dean Byington