Effie Pryer

Lately I’ve been interested in whether AI could offer artists new pathways for creativity or perhaps slowly render us redundant, so when I needed some direction on a topic I knew very little about - that is, football of most codes and shapes - I fed it my idea to see what it could teach me. The result was an unsettling expression of collective knowledge manipulated into a distorted and disembodied illustration of the game, as apparently seen from an artist’s perspective; dismissing the details of who, what and which ball for an entirely aesthetic display of athleticism. In doing so, the images were often beautiful but soulless, lacking the human passion of a real footy game, or indeed a Caravaggio painting. AI had constructed its own reality, with some amusing results including several balls in the one game, adding international basketball kits and generating terrifying characters with muscular arms for legs. In unpicking the errors I ended up appreciating more about the game than if I hadn't attempted a shortcut (mainly by enjoying YouTube medleys of greatest AFL marks - all in the name of research) and while AI gave me a unique perspective this time around, I think my job might be safe for now.