face lift: Digital and Machine Artists

Last week, we focused on outsider artists and creators whose work actively resists the mainstream. From fabric artists reclaiming undervalued mediums to visionaries like Henry Darger and Aloïse Corbaz, we explored how deeply personal, often hidden work can stand in radical opposition to capitalist, algorithm-driven aesthetics. If anything lives far from the reach of artificial intelligence, it's the tactile intimacy of embroidery or the obsessive, unmarketed sprawl of outsider art.

But what about the artists whose tools and mediums are already entangled with the digital world? This week, we turn our attention to digital creators—artists who are, in many ways, on the frontlines of the AI debate. Digital illustrators, photographers, motion designers, and animators are being directly impacted by generative tools that can mimic their output without their labor, consent, or style. These are the artists whose work is often questioned even by the art world itself: “Is it really art if there’s no canvas? No brush? No raw material?”

As AI-generated images flood timelines and marketplaces, it’s the work of digital artists that is most at risk of being diluted, devalued, or outright stolen. When a painting is re-created by an AI, we can at least argue for the absence of brushstrokes and texture—for now. But when an AI mimics a digital painting or photo edit, the differences are harder to explain to a casual viewer. The threat becomes not only about aesthetics—but about authorship, ethics, and survival.

I am a photographer first, I’ve always drawn and I do love the physicality of working with three dimensional things, but photography is and always will be my first love. I’m sure on analog photography day here I will wax poetic about the darkroom, but I’m just as happy making pictures with my phone camera. 

So what do we do about it?

There’s no easy answer, but this week we’ll highlight five artists who continue to create digitally—without the use of AI—crafting work that’s deeply intentional, skilled, and human. Their work reminds us that the digital medium is not void of soul. It is still touched by hands, dreams, and years of learning. They prove that creating digitally doesn’t mean giving up artistic agency—and that authenticity, even online, still matters.

Stay tuned for a group of really exceptional digital and machine based artists.

I'd like to point out here that this project has turned into something very different. It's a research project prompted by thoughts about AI and the future. It's putting in my personal work to see what kind of conversation I can have with other artists. It's leaning into absurdity.

I'm proud to be exploring these radical artists. I'm learning a lot, and the conversation I'm having with my own work is expanding what I know. It's been incredibly rewarding.

I've been posting the main body of this project for the last few days, but on our blog I do quite a bit more. This project started out as my trying to understand AI because I don't think it's going anywhere. It's turned into a little plea to the world to stop getting distracted and start looking at individual artists.

I will continue to post the partial pieces, but if you want to see the full experiment go check us out on our blog =] Subscribe if you want, there's chaos and fun, and a soon to be zine.

Prompt+Original

A surreal, abstract portrait of a humanoid figure with a fractured, mosaic-like face. The background features horizontal dark stripes adorned with gold geometric patterns. The figure's skin is rendered in a metallic silver tone, with bold black outlines segmenting the face and neck into shards. Some shards are filled with vibrant neon gradients—pink, orange, green, and yellow—while others remain empty or monochrome. The eyes are bright turquoise with vertical slit pupils, giving a feline or reptilian appearance. One eye is partially obscured by black, and the mouth stretches into a wide, unsettling grin with sharp, animalistic teeth. The overall style combines tribal, glitch, and stained-glass aesthetics, evoking themes of identity fragmentation and internal chaos masked by a smile.

Edit 1+1.2 +1.3

You said:

make the neon parts look like they're three dimensional geometric rocks do the prompt like it's digital art make him look more realistic. okay brighten it a bit and make him look hyper realistic, add some pink to the gemstones neon colors

I'd like to point out here sometimes when I push this right towards the creepiest ends of the uncanny valley very intentionally and my stomach also sometimes does a little flip. It's frightening.

I'm going on record to say that AI scares me literally on the regular.

Edit 2

okay creepy lets bring it all the way back to cartoon

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