Crap Artificial Intelligence Banksy in Augmented Reality
I’ve been working on using Artificial Intelligence to create some weird and distorted Banksy-style images. The algorithm produced some strange graffiti and mangled vaguely human figures. These are then projected around Bristol using Augmented Reality for an uncanny but clearly digital immersion in the real world.Coming through Art school near Bristol around the time that Banksy was hitting first big shows left me with a bit of a bad taste for the artist. I’ve since warmed to his work and appreciate what he’s done for the art world, political movements and accessibility. I’m sure he loathes the ridiculous prices his work now fetches and the insidious nature of the market. This work was something of a response to a similar misgiving I’ve been having about the NFT market, with works often created using artificial intelligence and then sold on in a similar money cleaning method. I used an algorithm to generate some bad Banksy knockoffs. These were then applied onto walls in real locations around Bristol using Augmented Reality. The results are some strange and unusual graffiti that, although a little warped and mis-formed, would not be totally out of place next to the genuine article. Perhaps this is something of a political protest piece towards the shady underbelly of the NFT trade. Crap Artificial Intelligence Banksy in Augmented Reality