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Megan Watson
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Digital Artist
Hartlepool
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I'm Megan Watson, a digital animator, artist, and Illustrator from the North East of England. Producing original artworks both independently and collaboratively with my art collective SWM.
In my solo work, I’m interested in converting aspects of nature into digital formats, working largely with 3D rendering software to explore the modern relationship with nature, technology, and humanity.
In my most recent work, Natural AI I have been working with the concept of AI as an organic self-developing form. Asking the question of what would it look like to cut out the middle-man and have metallic post-human intelligence emerge independently? What if Iron ore’s instead of being mined, just opened like wombs and metallic post-humans came out. Birthed from an interest in modern technology, mythology, and AI’s representation in media and entertainment, I envision nature, technology, and humanity harmoniously as a singular entity; fluctuating between correlating representation.
When reading an article titled ‘Making AI Smarter’ by Kristian Kersting, he talked about AI technology becoming “self-organizing.” Developing technology to program AI to make its own decisions based on “understanding human intelligence and building more human-like intelligence in machines.” Janelle Shane AI researcher called AI “A weird force of nature.” And Sam Harris neuroscientist and philosopher ended his TedTalk on AI saying “we have to admit we are in the process of building some kind of god.” These parallels of human comparison and religious connotations are something I find really interesting.
In films such as HER and Blade Runner 2049 or tv shows such as Humans, the emotional side of AI and what happens when the technology develops consciousness is at the forefront. I think this is particularly interesting because it reflects humanity; in the TV show Humans the emotional parts of humans that are sometimes seen as faults, are the parts that make people refer to the AI creations as “extraordinary” and “brilliant.”
There's a lot we can learn from technology and nature, and visa versa.