7 Artists Making Good AI Art Right Now
also how to have a healthier feed
I criticise too much on this blog. Time for some praise.
But first, some criticism. I’ve found the art world highly uninspiring for the last few years. The nadir of this had to be the Turner Prize 2024. This is the biggest art award in Britain, and the Tate Britain hosts works from the prize’s four shortlisted finalists.
The stereotypical critiques of contemporary art are aimed at it being ‘too abstract’ or ‘something anyone could do’. This wasn’t the issue with the Turner Prize. The issue was that it was just so utterly dull. (this review says that in more detail)
I largely agree with Dean Kissick’s stir-causing polemic that dominated discourse around this time. Contemporary art has become predictable and lifeless, with wall texts that over-explain meanings that aren't evident in the works themselves.
At the same time, this era’s natural successor faces top-down blunt dismissal of its own. I believe they call it slop. But the issue obviously isn’t the use of technology. It’s the intention. And if you truly have nothing of note to say, it will fall flat. But that’s true if you’re a marketer using Midjourney for the first time, or a nationally shortlisted artist with a room at the Tate Britain. Cool people will still make cool stuff.
Also, I worry that caring more about art discourse than art will lead to less time being spent looking at beautiful things and more time arguing, which seems like a net negative.
So, here are some interesting people currently making really interesting things. I hope it makes your feed a bit more beautiful too.
notes:
The numbering is not a ranking.
I don’t really know anything about the digital art scene as a whole, I am sure there are plenty of people doing amazing things that I just haven’t come across yet.
Link me some others that you enjoy.
1.pale kirill
twitter: @palekirill
Kirill’s animations are pure uncanny, pairing things that shouldn’t be together in the spirit of Andre Breton’s surrealism. His use of Gen AI takes this to another level though, where generated video looks essentially real, leaving you doubly questioning what you’re looking at. It seems to me this is an obvious way for AI art to go. While it’s fair to worry about the negative consequences of not knowing if anything you see is real, it’s pretty special to see things that shouldn’t be possible. and question the assumptions you started with.
It’s very dreamlike, which is a word you can end up using a lot to describe what it’s been like to see how models ‘see’ the world this year. Reminds me a bit of Ed Atkins ‘Voile la Verite’.
In his words: '“As AI evolves rapidly, long-term artistic explorations create a dynamic space for testing and redefining aesthetics. This ongoing movement keeps the work flexible, allowing it to merge diverse influences into a cohesive vision—something I call Goliath Style”
The gif above doesn’t do his work justice, as he also uses generated audio to suck you in even more. The ‘Life is Strange’ reel is cool af, and this video of himself he made using just a selfie, Midjourney, Luma, and Suno. Perhaps this is the future of the self-portrait (or the instagram feed, which I guess also is the present of the self-portrait).
(bonus one more if you like this: serezha galkin)
2.Kat/The Poet Engineer
twitter: @poetengineer_
Magritte was moved to tears when he saw de Chirico’s The Song of Love in 1922, because he felt as if his ‘‘eyes saw thought for the first time”. Funnily enough that’s how I feel about much of Magritte’s work, but seeing Kat’s has also made me think this could be a common lens for AI work too.
In a world where you can make any completely lifelike scene you want, real awe will eventually only come from people who find ways to visualise things that have never been visualised before. Kat’s work feels a bit like diving into your brain, in a half sci-fi half spiritual way, and is genuinely experimental in a way most experimental artists fail to be experimental. I’m into this Synesthisia Storyteller, her trials with gestures, and the combination of both.
It’s also obvious that she is a very talented engineer too, which seems important. Both because artists are going to act more like engineers, but because engineers are going to have to act more like artists too.
3.Mac Baconai
twitter: @macbaconai
While this blog has covered, in relative depth, why a lot of people seem to not care about AI that much, I still can’t say I fully understand people who don’t have some sense of wonder about the future. If you want to immediately boost that sense of wonder, you should browse Mac’s feed.
I think there’s a real chance this is a contender for one of the aesthetics of the next decade or so. There’s a mix of pure tech, curiosity, homage to past civilisations that got us here, but also just the pure adventure that you feel when you fully grasp what life could be like in a couple decades time.
It doesn’t shock me that Perplexity have picked him up to work on their creative, as they are the only AI company with aesthetics good enough to suggest they have the taste to go and find the best talent out there.
4.Nomads & Vagabonds
twitter: @nomadsvagabonds
N&V are clearly into AI policy and what powerful AI means for daily life in general, which I’m pretty sure is what all their artwork is also about. They refer to their style as post-photography, which really does work as a label. There’s a reasonable chance our sense of reality as we know it is going to dissolve, and there’s a feeling of invasion at the heart of a lot of these works that I think is accurately predicting what the median reaction will be if the current forecasts are anything to go by. Again it’s interesting how there’s definitely a certain retro look here, which also features in some of the other artists on this list.
5.DeltaSauce
twitter: @delta_sauce
DS describes their genre as ‘liminalism’, which becomes pretty self-explanatory when you see some of their work. I’ve always been into eerie stuff, maybe for similar reasons as to why I’m into psychology. Cool things happen when regularity breaks down.
And while I can preach forever about the potential of technology to make a thousand blossoms bloom in your head everyday for the rest of your life, I can’t deny the scary parts. We are lonely. We are almost certainly going to get lonelier. How does it feel to stare that right in the face?
6.Gabriel Nebülar
twitter: @Nebular___
There’s something so cool about the glitchy asesthetic that the current tools are very good at. The gif above is pulled from ‘here and there’ which is a stunning audiovisual piece. When you pair it with found footage like Nebülar does you get this feeling of reality split, where it almost feels like the digital half is the part that’s natural, or more spiritual, with the real footage feeling like the creation. Something magical about it, especially pieces like this.
Again it comes back to tools helping us express what moments feel like, not creating the most lifelike portrayals of things that could happen. It reminds of a bit of Mario Klingemann’s work, who ended up behind the scenes at Google for a few years, while producing visual concepts like this distorted news interview.
(bonus one more if you like this: Chepertom)
7.motherlouisiane
twitter: @motherlouisiane
ML seems to have discovered/created this folded paper aesthetic that really makes you feel the potential of the current tools. The letter above never existed, but it truly feels real, not just looks real. ML is now experimenting with this method applied to different scenes, as well as some surreal stuff, that give the vibes of some artefacts of some foreign life you’ll never life. It’s genuinely beautiful work, that just makes me excited for the near infinite possibilities for new aesthetics that are not possible with traditional analogue methods.
that’s it. happy to take down any images i’ve used if the artists want me to. thanks to you all.