Divorce from the Human Entity: A Portrait in Reflection

This piece reflects on the current state of identity politics, risen to an elevated pitch by the global introduction of Artificial Intelligence in recent years. As artists, our identity is tightly linked to our ability to communicate to the public, and with the existence of a mechanized entity that does so ceaselessly, I personally battle against feeling obsolete in my talents. I represent this battle by noting how intricately the artist is tied to their carnal being, framing my own photograph in a reflected nude silhouette. I then overlayed the composite image with interview style dialogue on themes of human identity and the comparable and contrastive elements of how humans and machines relate to time as well as themselves. This conversation was concluded with my request for two unique sentences that the system (ChatGPT 4o mini) had never encountered; quite profoundly, it responded: “The moonlight shimmered on the forgotten orchard, where time itself seemed to take a nap beneath the quiet whispers of old oak trees” and later, “In the quiet space between certainty and uncertainty, AI lingers, uncertain of its own capacity to understand the human experience.”