A friend of mine asked: Does it matter whether a work of art is made by a human or a machine?
The question captured many of the creative industry’s concerns about artificial intelligence.: the flood of images drowns out our capacity to appreciate art, humanity and creativity in art are fading and copyrights are becoming blurred.
I wanted to explore the difference between the material I produce as an artist and those generated for me by artificial intelligence. What becomes of my authorship if half of the images in my work are created by artificial intelligence?
From these experiments and reflections came the video artwork Growth.
Growth explores the tension between human creativity and artificial intelligence through the metaphor of growth. In the piece, vegetation begins to sprout from a woman, threatening to cover her entirely.
Pinja Valja is a Helsinki-based visual artist whose work focuses on media art. A central theme in her work is the interface between reality and perceptions of reality – how cultural and psychological structures, language and experiences shape an individual’s perception of the reality around them. Valja’s works are part of the collections of HAM and the Finnish National Gallery. In addition to art contexts, her cinematic works have been shown at film festivals such as Nordisk Panorama. Valja holds a Master of Arts 2016 from Aalto University in Photography and is currently pursuing a PhD in Art at the same university.