Hi, Miles Astray, can you please introduce yourself a little bit?
I'm a multidisciplinary artist, combining writing and photography into art activism, inspired by a slow and immersive journey around the world that started in 2012.
What is the purpose of submitting your photo work to AI contest?
With AI-generated content remodelling the digital landscape rapidly while sparking an ever-fiercer debate about its implications for the future of content and the creators behind it – from creatives like artists, journalists, and graphic designers to employees in all sorts of industries – I entered this actual photo into the AI category of 1839 Awards to prove that human-made content has not lost its relevance, that Mother Nature and her human interpreters can still beat the machine, and that creativity and emotion are more than just a string of digits.
What do you think about photographic images created by AI?
I'm all about the real world. My work is candid, which makes it the very opposite of AI. I don't consider myself a very imaginative artist, neither as writer, nor a photographer. My favorite subject is the world as is, the natural world and the human world, so I love to depict reality. I do, however, appreciate and admire the imagination that goes into the work of artists who create entire worlds from scratch in their minds, and people like Boris Eldagsen produce some striking imagery via AI.
I think you may try using AI before. What do you think about it?
Once for five minutes last year. I wanted to see if AI could replicate one of my actual photos, but the results were so cartoonish and sad, so far from photorealistic, that I dropped it right there. It's just not my domain.
S E L F I E N D, this photograph was captured in the same day of F L A M I N G O N E © Miles Astray