ARIEL KOTZER: AN INTERVIEW ON AI AND ART

Ariel Kotzer is a designer whose career spans Jerusalem, São Paulo, NYC, and Tel Aviv. With a background in visual communication and architecture, he has created award-winning work for agencies like Pentagram and TBWA. Now, he brings his distinct vision to AI art, exploring its possibilities beyond traditional prompting. His work has been featured at Jerusalem Design Week, The AI Film Academy Awards, Artefact AI Film Festival, and Oculus Gallery NYC.

While visiting HSE ART AND DESIGN SCHOOL in Saint Petersburg, Ariel Kotzer gave a lecture and joined us for an interview. He shared his insights on AI’s role in art and design, discussing its potential, limitations, and creative impact.

Actually, I haven't seen any fully AI-generated design yet, people are just now starting to use it. I actually implemented AI in some of my recent projects, to produce images and illustrations for a brand styleguide. I was extremely happy with the results, as was the client.

In the talk I gave I mentioned Paula Scher,one of the leading partners of Pentagram, and her recent view on using AI. She is very well-known and probably one of the most respected designers in the world today, and yes, she decided to use AI in a branding project. But what’s more important is the way that she used it. First of all she hired an illustrator, who created the style they wanted for the project. Only then came the AI, which was  “fed” with the illustrator’s work and with that artistic style used to create all the different elements. And I agree with what she said: AI is just a tool. And like any tool you can use it, in good way or bad way.

To make it clearer, I'll give you an example. When I was in school about 30 years ago, desktop computers just started coming in, and so using them for design was a completely new thing. It just didn’t exist before, everything was done by hand. Obviously, today, both students and professionals use computers to design, all the Adobe programs and others. No one nowadays thinks of it as a problem, it’s just a tool that allows you to be creative. My attitude towards AI is exactly the same: it’s a new tool.

I don’t think it does. Overall I see the tendency of going back to traditional tools, for example illustration is having a big comeback even though for years it kinda disappeared. When I started my academic education, there was no illustration at all. People were in love with using a computer at some time. But today people are going back to doing more and more things by hand. Now there is a certain need for human expression that no machine can replicate or replace. 

That reminds me of something. When I was starting out working in advertising, I started my way in New York. And then after a couple of years, I moved back to Israel and I worked in Jerusalem. It turned out to be two very different approaches. What we did in New York is when we had an idea we did a photoshoot to make this idea real, hired a photographer, went on a set and put it up. In Israel the budgets were usually much smaller, so they didn't do that. What they did is using stock photography. That was the first time I ever saw stock photos in advertisement. At the first place I worked at, a very small ad agency, they even had a library of old magazines which they went through, found an image that they liked, tore it out, and used that. For me it was shocking that instead of thinking of an idea and then embodying this idea through photography, they would look for ideas in given images. 

When we talk about AI mimicking somebody's style I can think of several situations, especially when people were just starting to do generative AI art, that caused a big uproar from the illustrator community. For example, there is Tomer Hanuka, a famous Israeli comic strip artist with an incredible, distinct style. One day he found that there's a Facebook page by the name of ‘Tomer Hanuka Aliens’ or something like this that was filled with art in his style, which someone was making with AI and selling. Now, he’s a living, working illustrator. So I can totally understand why somebody like that would feel threatened by AI.

I have this rule or even more of a principle for myself. I won't do anything that mimics other people's art, especially if they're still alive. For me, it doesn't make sense, but that doesn't mean people will not do it. Industries like advertising have no problem doing that. 

But even before AI, there have always been people who are actually doing interesting work and pushing the boundaries of what has been done before and people who are just copying others or do the same thing over and over again. I don't think it has something to do with AI or that AI is going to make it better or worse. There are people who are mimickers and people who are trailblazers.

One of the reasons I started working with AI is that because most of the stuff I saw created with it was complete crap. It comes from this attitude that a person can just allow the tool to do everything for them without actually bringing anything new, any experiences and background.

The ideas, they don’t come from nothing. I have many years of experience and a whole world of interests and curiosities. So my art is based on everything that I've accumulated up until now, in all of these years I've been living and working in the field and even before that. My dad was a comic strip collector, he loved film and he loved books, and all of that started my love for art. I know Kandinsky, I know Malevich, I know Van Gogh and I love these people — they're all inside of me. 

So when I come to AI with an idea, that idea embodies that inside world. Any idea and even the words that you type in to get the image contain or don't contain something. So I did this film in black&white with AI and the choice of specifically being black&white, the style, the lighting, a lot of it has to do with what I have inside of me. And so does the result.

In the way that I work with AI, I like to see what it comes up with. So I don't give AI a lot of direction, just a little bit of it. But the choice I make after getting back results of going with a certain direction, is my choice. It's an aesthetic and conceptual choice and those are based on my inner world.

No, I don't think it's cheating and I don't have a problem with it. But I do think there's something completely different about the process of making art, for lack of a better word, with AI than it is with traditional methods. 

Like I said before, the process of working with generative AI is more of art directing and curating than creating. I'm working with another something that is making the art itself. I am directing, I am choosing, I am making little changes and deciding which way to go. 

This something has its positive side to it. It's very immediate and very open to do a lot of different things. It's always fascinating to me and I keep doing it because I get interesting results. I get things that I would not be able to get on my own and go to places where I wouldn’t go on my own. 

I recently heard an interview with Brian Eno about AI. He is very famous and renowned musician. In this interview, he talks about how when he started out making music, he wasn't a musician. But there were all these new electronic tools that allowed him to kind of skip all the necessity to learn music basics and just start to experiment. And out of this experimentation, he was able to create something new and different. And he doesn't have a problem with it, and neither do I. Like he said, for a person who has ideas but maybe is less able to execute them, these kinds of tools are fantastic. Because this way they can achieve the results on their own.

Today I'm making two types of art at the same time. I'm making AI art and nowadays I will definitely go to it when I'm doing, for example, animation. It allows me to do it in new ways and currently that's my theme of exploration.

But at the same time, I come from a world of working with your hands. So I do traditional art as well. Currently, I have a project in Jerusalem, where I work with clay. The simple reason why I did that is because I need to do something that is not screen and keyboard based. It’s not even just about AI, but computers in general. I grew up with pencils and brushes and paint and paper, and even when I'm drawing on my iPad, it's not the same, it’s a piece of plastic touching a piece of glass, not the same feeling as a brush on paper at all. 

I have a need for that work as well, so I work in both mediums. And I only decide what I will use after coming up with the idea, either based on my wish or goals.

Honestly, I don't know. It's progressing very quickly. One of the things about working with AI tools is that you have to always be on your toes. I've been working with AI for a while, it's going to be 3 years this year, and every couple of months or even weeks, something new comes out.

For example in MidJourney, beyond the fact that you can put in words and get back images, now they have a new function called “Moodboard”. With it you create a style that you can reuse and AI knows to maintain consistency throughout the whole project. I use it for my current animated movie with a specific black and white and kind of Eastern European style. A great function, but in order to understand how to use it, you need to learn it like anything else. And these new functions come very quickly, so you constantly have to learn. It's like surfing, you have to be on top of the wave all the time. It's challenging and it's fun at the same time. 

If you ask where AI is going, I think it’s becoming more widespread. Like ChatGPT, just about a year ago people were skeptical or scared about using it. Now more and more people are using it on a daily basis. Because it’s a good and easy tool that works well. without noticing it, it’s already become a part of our lives.

I think it's very possible in some spheres, for example, advertising that was using stock photography will probably turn to AI. All the big stock companies understand this, and are alredy incorporating AI generated images.

I had a job recently where I needed an image of a dog holding a bone. Traditionally you’d go to a photographer, take a couple of days to choose them, bring the photographer, find and choose the dog, then you’ll need a dog trainer. The whole process can take like a week and a half and a lot of money. With AI I was able to get a good image within literally minutes and at almost no cost, because I’m already paying the subscription. That is definitely going to change the financial aspect of such jobs. 

Does that mean that photographers will be out of the job? No, I don't think so. I think that there's going to be a market redistribution. Brands will go to professional photographers for more specific works and more high-end, they will ask for personal style and creativity. It will make a difference in the amount of work that goes to photographers, but won’t be able to replace professionals. But AI is definitely going to come instead of stock photography. Stock photography is dead. Thank God.

I don’t really have much experience in marketing my art. Only recently I sold my first ever pieces of art; those were AI art. It was up on a website called Sedition. I met their representatives when I was showing one of my films in Portugal last year. We connected and then they asked me to put together artwork for their website. It's like an online gallery. They will help you show your work, they have a community of collectors subscribed to the website updates. So when a new work of art comes out, first of all, the collectors see it. Artists can decide what works to put on, how many pieces, how many editions of every piece, and how much to price every edition. I did a collection of four pieces, 15 editions of each. Collectors who bought them can show them in their home, in their office, in their business. Apparently, there's a market for that. The platform promotes your work on their social media platforms and informs their collectors so they help you sell it. 

It's much more immediate. In physical galleries, only a limited amount of pieces can be shown and people have to come to see it. When it's online it’s more available, anybody can come on the website and buy it. At the same time, I've been going around, even here in St. Petersburg, to galleries, because I want to bring my work to the real world. But for that, I need it to be not just a digital file that you put on a screen. I need it to become something physical.

When I work with AI I create something that is digital, then I think what else can I do with it for it to become a physical work of art. Yesterday I was at the Marina Gisich Gallery, and she showed me a piece. I don't remember the name of the artist, but it's incredibly beautiful work. What he did is he created an image with AI and then used a robot to carve it out of a piece of wood. On top of that, he projects the original  image onto the physical piece, so it’s connecting a digital and a physical object. The resulting piece is one of a kind. I want to do something similar. Being online and showing my work on different platforms, where they can be purchased to be shown on screens, is great. But I also want to be in physical spaces.

I wish to put my artworks in galleries, but overall they prefer physical objects, not something on a screen. At the end of the day, galleries need to sell something to their clients, and the buyers need to be able to take the piece of art and put it in their homes. I’m still figuring out how I could interpret my art, for example, in a sculpture.

There is a project that I'm working on now and would like to continue in physical form. It’s a series called Goddesses that is inspired by Asian metaphysical beings and looks like it's made of glass. There's a friend of mine in Israel who, as I found out last week, has a 3D printer in her parents’ house. It prints every kind of material, clay, glass, metal, whatever. I don't know why her dad wanted this kind of thing, but it's an incredible machine. So now I'm trying to think on how I could use it to make a work that I started with AI into a physical subject. 

Figures in these images are transparent and contain several layers. You can see a woman there, a skeleton, clothes, details around. For now, it's just images, but I would love to see them become physical pieces. They are already looking three-dimensional, so I believe now I’ll try to make them into models for 3D printing. Again, it all comes back to my love for the connection between technology and art.

I'm very conceptual, and also very intuitive in putting my concepts together, and I only trust myself to do this.

I actually tried using the machine for it. When putting together this animation film that I'm working on right now, I started by trying to use ChatGPT and similar programs to help me write the script. I wanted it to be funny and interesting, but I just wasn't happy with the results AI gave me. And in general, whenever I was trying to come up with new ideas or to have a conversation with ChatGPT, it was always disappointing. 

So I don't trust the AI to be able to come up with a concept, an actually good concept. That takes something, a spark, that the AI right now just doesn't have. But who knows where it's going.