I’ve Got Bad News

I’ve Got Bad News was the title of my solo show at Columbia Basin College during the winter of 2024-2025.

The title came in response to what I knew would be the last election cycle of the pre-A.I. era, as well as worsening national and global crises: environmental destruction, economic collapse, and an overwhelming flood of propaganda. The work created for this show can be split in two groups:

The first group combines digital painting and digital collage techniques to create symbolic, editorial images that center metaphorical reflections on social problems. For example, Vultures reflects on climate issues and identifies a conceptual parallel between the images of circling hurricanes and the circling of vultures over dying animals. This style of symbolic communication draws equally from contemporary editorial illustration and ancient prophetic traditions.

The second group utilized Grok 2 to create a series of propaganda images which provide false evidence for popular American conspiracy theories. Using wikipedia to source the conspiracy theories, I created 24 pieces of evidence for 24 conspiracy theories without the need for understanding American socio-politics, and completed them in under 24 hours with only a few dollars of funding. The point was to demonstrate how unbelievably easy it is to weaponize A.I. for propaganda purposes, even with a limited understanding of the group being targeted.

For the show, the painted images were in a central gallery space, while the A.I. images were arranged ascending a staircase in order of their credibility, allowing viewers to progress from the plausible to the impossible, mirroring the journey into the conspiracy rabbit hole. Viewers of the exhibit were warned with bright red signs that they were viewing “weapons-grade technology in use.”