{"id":96142,"date":"2025-09-05T09:24:52","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T16:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=96142"},"modified":"2025-09-10T10:09:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T17:09:46","slug":"emergence-reflects-the-uneasy-place-of-automation-in-art-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/emergence-reflects-the-uneasy-place-of-automation-in-art-today\/","title":{"rendered":"“Emergence” Reflects the Uneasy Place of Automation in Art Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Close-up

A detail from \u201cMonuments,\u201d where algorithmic instructions build and dismantle block-like forms, highlighting the procedural nature of Jensen\u2019s process.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The folks at Craft Lake City, Utah\u2019s Do-It-Yourself festival, can\u2019t have been unaware of the irony: for their latest \u201cCelebration of the Hand\u201d exhibit they\u2019ve curated works executed by a robotic arm. Cheeky buggers.<\/h4>\n

Displayed outdoors on the Museum of Temporary Change\u2019s placards, Emergence<\/i> features reproductions of 14 large-scale works created by a mix of\u00a0 <\/span>human intention and mechanical execution. Utah-based digital artist Andrew Jensen, a software engineer, writes the code that becomes instruction, but he neither guides nor executes the line. The algorithm generates the work, which is then rendered by a robotic arm holding a pen.<\/h4>\n

On display along Salt Lake City\u2019s Broadway, Emergence <\/i>features three sets of works, each image showing a piece in various stages of execution, accompanied by signage that breaks down the process into neat steps. \u201cFlow Fields\u201d offers a recipe for drawing fluid, organic lines: create a grid, pick a few starting points, then let the algorithm tell the pen where to wander. \u201cMonuments\u201d is less lyrical, more architectural\u2014blocks stacked up by one algorithm are systematically demolished by another. \u201cReactions\u201d goes further still, simulating diffusion systems, then rendering the results in tidy ink. The explanations read less like artist statements than lab manuals.<\/h4>\n
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\"Outdoor

\u201cFlow Fields\u201d demonstrates how code directs a robotic arm to create organic, fluid lines, part of Andrew Jensen\u2019s Emergence series for Craft Lake City\u2019s Celebration of the Hand.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For a series called “celebration of the hand,” Emergence<\/em>\u00a0 <\/span>is almost a celebration of its absence. And in this way, the project embodies the uneasy state of art-making in 2025: still tethered to human intention, but increasingly outsourced to automation.<\/p>\n

In an age when many working artists cower beneath the impending wave of AI-generated images, Jensen is almost a luddite. His images are still analog, in a way: something physical\u2014the robot arm\u2014is doing the drawing to create a physical artifact (although what we\u2019re looking at outdoors at the Museum of Temporary Change are, by necessity, reproductions). On his website<\/a>, Jensen explains the difference between his process and that of AI-generated images. In the latter, he says,\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cthe \u2018input\u2019 is a typed out prompt, as well as a huge number of images across the internet that a neural network has analyzed. The neural network takes in these inputs and calculates what the output image should be based on statistical probabilities. In the style of art that I create, the \u2018input\u2019 is computer code that I write and execute. It can be referred to as \u2018procedural art\u2019 because it relies on \u2018procedures\u2019 or functions defined in the code to determine the output image. There are no other images being fed into an algorithm as inputs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jensen isn\u2019t ripping anyone off. His images aren\u2019t particularly striking, either. \u201cMonuments\u201d resembles computer graphics from your parents\u2019 childhood. \u201cFlow\u201d is more organic, with a rough resemblance to the drawings of Al Denyer. Stress on the rough<\/em>. Denyer works from topographic maps and aerial perspective, adding richness and layers to her images. And she draws each line by hand.<\/h4>\n

Increasingly, we\u2019ll need to ask ourselves if that matters. Spend a little time on social media and you\u2019ll sense the AI anxiety engulfing artists. Provo\u2019s The Compass Gallery recently posted a video celebrating the various styles of art they enjoy. Anything but AI art was the message. Elsewhere on my feed, a mural artist\u2019s cri de c\u0153ur to her community lamented the use of AI in their mural designs. Something, she felt, was lost in these designs.<\/p>\n

Indeed, artists increasingly talk about how there is something missing from AI-generated art. The \u201csoul\u201d of the artist, if you will. But, apart from the six-figured hands, can you really tell? Several surveys online will prompt you to decide which images are AI-generated. How uncanny will the AI-valley be in a year or two? When will Malcolm Gladwell gather gallerists and museum experts for a \u201cblind\u201d taste test to see if even the most trained eyes can tell the difference.<\/p>\n

Will we increasingly be drawn to look for artworks that show the wabi-sabi of human imperfection\u2014a stray fingerprint from greasy fingers, a drop of coffee or spittle on white paper, hair from a brush or beard stuck in oil paint? That can only last as long as it takes someone to prompt AI\u2014like a high schooler telling ChatGPT to introduce spelling mistakes and other errors into their essays\u2014to add these flourishes.<\/h4>\n

Some will lean (even more) into the story behind the hand, so that biography will increasingly serve as a means to separate artists. We won\u2019t be critiquing art much from a formalist or structuralist perspective, but selling the biography. Social media is already training us to do that. It\u2019s almost as if an algorithm is guiding our hand.<\/h4>\n
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\"Outdoor

The taggers likely didn’t know the added commentary they were providing when they graffitied many of the placards in Emergence.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Craft Lake City<\/a> invites the public to participate in a virtual Lunch and Learn about Emergence<\/em> on September 16 at 12:00 PM \u2013 1:00 PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The folks at Craft Lake City, Utah\u2019s Do-It-Yourself festival, can\u2019t have been unaware of the irony: for their latest \u201cCelebration of the Hand\u201d exhibit they\u2019ve curated works executed by a robotic arm. Cheeky buggers. Displayed outdoors on the Museum of Temporary Change\u2019s placards, Emergence features reproductions of 14 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_1098-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 14:46:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96146,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96142\/revisions\/96146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}