Artist: Geoff Shupe
Title: Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable From Magic
Medium: Acrylic on Illustration Board
Size: 16" x 24" (17" x 25" framed)
Price: $3,200.00
Artist Statement:
Inspired by “The Alchemist,” by Dutch painter Cornelis Bega, 1663, this work strives to combine the modern myth of technology (AI in particular) with the classic myth of alchemy. Both myths being considered the science-as-panacea of their day.
The robot-alchemist, an embodiment of scientism, sits in its laboratory belaboring to transmute lead into gold, surrounded by the archaic and contemporary ephemera of hidden knowledge. Not unlike other Silicon Valley Frankensteinian modern metal golems, itself a fantastically human achievement of engineering, now merely an automated proxy for man in their quest for the philosopher’s stone. The alchemist invokes incantations and algorithms, channeling limitless resources in pursuit of humanity’s most basic desire: The quest for the thing that will make everything easier, just got easier!