Depicting the enigmatic nature of the human experience, Katie’s AI images explore an alternate reality of chaos and the impossible, alongside sculptures that connect with these ideas. Below we explore her inspirations and artistic journey!

Greetings Katie, can you please introduce yourself? Where are you from? What is your artistic background? How long have you been working with AI?

Hi! I’m a Scottish artist who works with AI along with a variety of different mediums such as printmaking, sculpture and collage. I began collaborating closely with artificial intelligence in 2021. My current AI work sees an exploration of an alternate reality and the chaos that arises when it collides with our world. In this synthetic realm, the boundaries of our tangible world are broken. It is a place in which the impossible becomes a daily occurrence and leaves the viewer to question the very limits of their existence.
I seek to create images that arrest the viewers' attention, even for just a second, compelling them to question the credibility of what they are seeing.
I want people to unearth their narrative from my images, allowing them to delve into their subconscious and discover a more personal significance.

You also do sculptures, do you see a connection between your sculpting work and AI images?

Much of my sculpture work delves into the bleak and ominous sides of humanity. This grounds a distinct link to my more dystopian and apocalyptic post-photography AI works. I also envision some of my more surreal and bizarre sculptures as artefacts from this alternate reality that I have created. Regardless of the medium, I always seem to infuse a sense of uncanniness within my art.

In your AI pictures, we can see subjects in unusual situations. What are the inspirations behind your aesthetic?

My work is deeply rooted in absurdism – the idea that human existence is intertwined in a purposeless and chaotic universe of utter randomness. My AI images respond to this philosophy by portraying subjects entangled in frenzied, bizarre and dreamlike scenes. I find the human experience to be enigmatic and deeply intriguing. I am often inspired by its intricate ambiguities and seek to portray these uncertainties through my AI post-photography. These photographic images convey a sense of disorder that characterizes our existence, while also highlighting the fragility and ambiguity of life. My art can be seen as a passage of escape from the constraints of our own reality. Here the viewer can become engrossed in a dubious world of the improbable and absurd.

Can you walk us through your process for creating the images? How do you come up with prompts, what image generator do you use? Etc..

Over the past few years, I’ve experimented with a variety of algorithms such as Stable Diffusion, and Dalle. I'm currently settled on Midjourney, although I’m looking to train my own model in the near future.
When it comes to forming prompts, I often channel my subconscious, employing surrealist techniques to aid me in the conjuring of perplexing scenes and ideas. I find further inspiration in the events and moments unfolding around me in the tangible world. I then amalgamate these junctures with AI to create a contradiction between the real and the artificial.

What challenges have you had working with this technology? What limitations have you encountered to bring your vision alive?

Achieving an exact vision through AI can be challenging as the technology is quite temperamental. It’s hard to get it to do precisely what you want, but I’ve found that some of the best results are yielded when I embrace this uncertainty. I enjoy taking advantage of the weirdness of AI.
It wasn’t until recent months that the long-standing problem of AI struggling to depict hands was resolved. With the release of Midjourney V5, this issue is no longer a hindrance. AI models are becoming increasingly responsive at an intense rate, I don’t see it being long before many of the current limitations are eliminated entirely.

What benefits have you seen from working with AI? What do you think is the potential?

AI technology has completely transformed my artistic practice. Before AI, I mainly stuck to conventional mediums such as painting, drawing, sculpture and collage. Now with AI, I am encouraged to shift away from traditional ways of working and explore more innovative utilisations. Through my experimentation, I have found many implementations of AI and I feel it holds potential to push contemporary art forward.
Currently, the most common use of AI in art is text prompting. While text prompts can undoubtedly produce intriguing results, moving into other creative applications is what I believe to be the next step for AI art. For example, I like to fuse AI with more traditional methods of creation to produce an amalgamation of the real and artificial. I’ve also recently been playing around with video, using my AI photography work to inform style.

Do you think AI is killing art or just expanding the realm of what is possible?

Definitely the latter. When I hear concerns of AI destroying art, it reminds me of when photography was first invented. At the time, people feared that photography would be the end of painting as we know it. We can now in the present see that these fears were not entirely founded. Painting is still to this day practiced by artists who value the medium for its unique qualities, such as the ability to capture a person's character in a way that photography cannot. While photography has clearly had a significant impact on art, it has not replaced traditional applications of artistic expression. I believe it is very possible that AI will develop in a similar way, ultimately moving into an artistic medium in its own right. The arrival of AI art does not signal the end of traditional artistic mediums by any means.

Finally, What is next for the future? Have any exciting projects coming up?

I have several exciting projects lined up! I’ve just finished designing a zine that has been in the works for a number of months now. Later this year, I’ll be working towards an exhibition to conclude my fine art honours degree. I have an array of ideas that I’m keeping under the radar for now. In the meantime, I’m committed to developing my practice, delving deeper into AI by exploring the relationship between art and technology. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next for me!