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Art in the age of AI

Inspired by the UAE’s hidden beauty, Spanish-Argentinian artist Pablo Dachefsky explores new perspectives with AI and art

Art came naturally to Pablo Dachefsky. When kids his age were getting excited about learning football tricks, he was planning his next project. His art-loving parents had decided that before signing him up for sport or language classes, he was to be enrolled into the world of arts sometimes through painting lessons, sometimes sculpting.

“My mother is a painter, so my foray into art started when I was very young. Art was part of our everyday life, and I was always painting or sculpting with my mother and my brother. I have many memories of us three doing something artistic together. It was our way of staying together,” recalls the 44-year-old Spanish-Argentinian adman, who recently forayed into the world of AI art.

The Dubai resident says he credits the UAE with inspiring him to embark on this generative adventure. He adds, “I feel have a connection with the desert, and it is something that I also discovered here because it's the first time that I'm living in a place with this impressive desert out there, where you can go and feel the immensity of it all. So all this gave me a lot of inspiration to do something new, different. I think that it was all about that sense I got from the very beginning, which is that the beauty of this country is not clear at first glance.”

The move to digital

As for working with AI, the shift to digital came naturally. Dachefsky remembers being curious about technology, about shiny new things and the latest tools in the digital world from an early age. His move into advertising only cemented this sense of wonder further. He explains: “I was drawing or painting lamps or whatever, at the same time I was using technology, doing digital collages and digital stuff. I remember that I did a collection of illustrations using Excel when I was 18 or 20 (years old).”

So when he saw AI being used to generate words and images, art just seemed like the next step. “Machine learning is a very known concept, it is nothing new. What’s new is how people are using it. You know that there are very creative minds globally always pushing boundaries of technology. So then when I just heard about chatGPT and all the generative AI platforms, I just started trying and testing, doing some stuff,” he says.

Electric dreams in the Emirates

Dachefsky’s pieces–which he sells online under the brand Mapure, a name made up through a mix of the words ‘map’ and ‘pure’–are inspired by the places he’s been to and the things he’s seen. The artworks in his repertoire represent different cities, but the UAE features prominently among them.

“I believed that different places have a lot in common with each other, but when I came here, I found that that’s not true," he said. "The beauty of any country is something that you have to discover. It's not always obvious. Dubai, for example, is a big city with very modern buildings, it's impressive in that way. But there are hidden gems of nature and architecture here too. Take the beach, for example, you can go for a more touristic kind of beach or something a little more beyond the everyday. I'm really impressed with the desert here. I think that we have a very beautiful, unseen places here.”

Dachefsky knows framework and the elements that make up a good photograph. He admits that he never really learnt how to use a camera properly, but when he sees a plant, a shadow or the light playing with the landscape, it stirs something in his imagination. “I love that sensation. So that's why I'm always capturing those things in my mind or on my phone. Then I start to recreate it in a more abstract way, because I think that I also want to spark the imagination of people. Because it's not about sharing a picture. It's not only about the place in itself, but also about the feeling and the sensation that that place can give you. And I want people to try to imagine what is happening there, what they will discover there.

“Moreover, Mapure doesn't have a truly commercial kind of objective. I mean, it's more about sharing the beauty of the things and trying to give people that sense of wonder. I also love the way of how I'm discovering different points of view of a city or space and trying to share that perspective.”

Part human, part machine

Speaking about generative AI’s impact on his art, he says. “It gives me another way to express what I'm looking for, because it has this way of giving you another point of view of things. You can give it some inspiration about things that you like, and it can give you a different way of putting things together; the use of different colours, or that ‘waking up in the morning’ feeling. For humans understanding of things in that way is not natural, but AI is ready to try to understand these kinds of concepts. So I'm using AI to give me different perspectives. It’s kind of like how one of my favourite artists (Russian painter) Wassily Kandinsky did things. He didn't have that human point of view of art. It was more about the free expression of things.”

Dachefsky added that he also enjoys the dichotomy that it offers: “AI can give you exactly what you are asking for. I mean, give me a man walking. But ask it to imagine things differently and I get something totally unexpected, which just blows my mind. I think that the perfect use of AI is to mix both things, I mean, our creativity and the power to get a totally different understanding of our environment because the programme doesn't have our restrictions - our backgrounds, which colour our perception, which limit it. There's just no limit.”

The journey that began in his early years continues. This time it naturally segues towards using a machine to give a new form to his humanistic impressions.

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