Russell Gaerlan
LA 1201
Left: Myself with Guest from John Harlan Norris’s Interpolators series
Middle: Untitled work from John Harlan Noriss’s Onlookers series
Right: Untitled work from John Harlan Noriss’s Onlookers series
Since the decsription for the Mirror Makers exhibit stressed the inteconnectedness
between Interpolators and Onlookers, two series of paintings by John Harlan Norris, I decided to
examine pieces from each of them for this project. The Interpolators series explores presentation
of public personas through a “traditional” abstact lens, while Onlookers delves into AI, seeing
images produced by machine learning programs translated and reworked into paintings. What I
found particularly intriguing was the contrast placed between the two series as an examination of
the dicsourse going on concerning traditional art versus AI art.
Very often, AI art is looked down upon for utilizing data sets of other artist’s work,
whether that’s in the form of paintings, photographs, or art of other mediums in its processes.
However, in the Onlookers series, Norris goes a step further to flip that narative on its head.
Taking the jumbled messes of imagery generated by the AI program, he re-introduces his own
human intention and work to what was previously nothing more than data translated into images,
creating something which is new, but not necessarily original, at least in the traditional sense.
Thinking about it this way, I think it raises an interesting question: is any art truly original?
Every work of art is inspired by something. Who is to say that, in principle, what Norris has done
is any different than what AI programs do? Both processes took one or multiple previously
existing images and created something new with those images as a basis. Even the paintings in
Norris’s Interpolators series are influenced by experience with real-world forms and objects.
Despite the similarities between Norris’s work and machine learning processes, many people
would still point to the former as “real art” and to the latter as a “cheap, hollow imitaton.” Not
that I necessarily agree with the ethics of AI art in its current form, but I think that with the
Onlookers series, Norris makes an interesting point on what it means to be original as a creator in
a rapidly evolving artistic landscape.