Broken

Starting around 2023 and then well into 2025, I was feeling what Viktor Frankl described in his famous book as an existential vacuum.

Just prior to this , I had been asked to paint a mural for the tech company I worked for. To my dismay, I had chanced upon Mid-Journey - an AI service that could generate images - one of the first, at the time. The discovery of this was most disconcerting for me, and my mind instantly conjured its own image of a dystopian future devoid of artists, writers, and musicians. Regardless, I used the new tool to draft a mockup of my mural.

The brief was for something with an owl on it; perhaps something to reflect the growing excitement about the emerging AI tech, but I quickly gravitated towards a slightly alternative premise for the painting. The idea was of a giant Transformers style robot flying over the ruins of a large city and it felt like a minor victory that the AI should provide me with the weapon of its own destruction. I suppose it might seem petty, but the sense of imposing dread would only grow over the months following the mural and for over a year after completion of the mural, I didn’t so much as lift a paintbrush...