DAVID HAUPTSCHEIN
Artist Statement

Throughout history, whenever a new art medium is invented, bold artists engage with the groundbreaking invention, letting their imaginations run wild, and creating things that have never before been seen. Of course, there will always be the inevitable detractors and naysayers who rail against the innovation, freeze like frightened rabbits, and end up waving from behind. Take, for example, the introduction of photography: it took decades before it was finally accepted as a serious medium for making art.

Now we have Photoshop and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which might best be described as “assisted intelligence” since it is neither intelligent nor sentient. What AI can do is to help stimulate creativity; it can harness and accelerate the ability of the artist to move in unpredictable and unique directions. For me, the transition to this powerful digital technology came easily, perhaps because I am fearless when it comes to making art. Naively, I assumed that other people would see AI as I do, which is as just another tool. I have been mistaken about this. Once, on the opening night of my own art exhibition, an angry patron accused me of being a fraud and a plagiarist. On another occasion, I was scolded by someone for daring to speak about AI in an art gallery, as if I had taken the name of the Lord in vain in a house of worship!

When people ask me questions about the meaning of my work, I try to answer as best I can. But in the end, because I’m inviting the viewer to become part of the creative process, I don’t want to tell them what to think, thereby robbing them of the pleasure of making their own discoveries. As the painter Francis Bacon once said, “If you can talk about it, why paint it?”