Serial Copycat
Dennis McCart
- Sitter: Dennis McCart
- Medium: Carbon Transfer Printing on watercolour paper
- Dimensions: 156cm x 28cm
- Representation: This artist represents themselves
2024 Digital Award
Proudly supported by
Accenture
About the artwork
This self portrait/series of portraits questions our understanding of self-portraiture and how we create a sense of identity. It also references the role of artificial intelligence in the creative process, by using both AI and a manual photographic process called carbon transfer printing.
“My portrait subverts the phenomenon of face swapping technology questioning authenticity and AI’s role in artmaking.”
The work used a program called Runway ML to merge two sets of images; a data set the artist created of photographic self portraits, and photos of early twentieth century surrealist artists whose images were out of copyright.
These artists were influential to Dennis McCart as a young artist and they also all embraced new technologies in their time.
McCart manipulated the images “…so a likeness of myself was still recognisable. The image was then reprocessed physically though the laborious 1860’s photographic method of carbon transfer printing to reclaim artistic control and detoxify the uncanny AI image, creating nuance, errors, chance revealing the human hand.”
McCart considers he is taking back ownership of the images, highlighting the imperfections created by the carbon transfer process and human intervention, compared with the “perfectness” of the AI created images.
As we search for signs of the artist’s features in this work, it challenges us to think about truth and authenticity in the digital age.
The artist appears in a masquerade and in various guises. It is not only the artist in masquerade, alongside artists from history, but also the artwork itself.
About the artist
Brisbane artist Dennis McCart works across a range of mediums including painting, drawing, animation and machine learning, drawing inspiration from the tension between humans’ instinctive connection to nature and ever-increasing signs of detachment. He has studied fine art, drama, digital new media, and most recently, a Master of Visual Arts at QCA, Griffith University. Repetition, remembrance, and recreation are all key components in his work. McCart has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, and been shortlisted as a finalist in notable art prizes within Australia.
Judge's Notes
This artwork operates on a number of levels. It’s a beautiful object, and it engages in a critical manner with portraiture and art making.
It does this by using both historical practices like carbon transfer and new tools like generative artificial intelligence. The work is self-reflective both conceptually and materially, using both AI and old photographic techniques to critique facial recognition technology, and celebrate human creativity.
