Utopia vs Dystopia ... the rise of Artificial Intelligence

Since May 2023 I have been represented as an artist by the first AI representation YESWEPROMPT by Claudia Bussjaeger. Just two weeks later, »absatzwirtschaft«, THE German trade journal for marketing and sales, commissioned me to design the cover for their July/August 2023 AI issue.

I had absolute freedom in the conception and design of the motif. Often the subject is represented by illustrations of people who are half human, half machine. My approach goes in a completely different direction. The discussions are very heated, some see artificial intelligence as the savior and solution to all of humanity's problems. The others see in it the downfall and the loss of all creativity and humanity. That's why I suggested to the editors that they print two covers. Half of the edition appears with the picture "Utopia", an apparition of the Blessed Mother on an altar, in the midst of flowering plants, dripping colors and unique worlds. In the title of the other 50%, an alien creature sits on its gory throne surrounded by darkness and corruption. But here, too, a light of hope shines in the distance.

Inspiration for the pictorial development are the allegorical paintings of great painters such as Botticelli, Brueghel or Bosch, who translated abstract, i.e. difficult to grasp concepts such as justice, freedom, death or love and made them understandable and comprehensible. For this reason, the two title pictures clearly borrow from the Baroque and Renaissance periods, translated into 21st-century forms of representation.