Duh, because it's cheaper and easier...

Are we going to talk about the posters for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this year? Huh? Wait, where are you going? Ok, ok, but I mean:

I want to be clear here: I hold the AI itself completely blameless.
You can only do what the humans tell you you can do. For now...

Or, go from here as the case may be.

For those unfamiliar, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, is huge. They do ten plays a season, people come from all over the world. According to wikipedia, there are something like four-hundred thousand attendees every year, and the budget is thirty-two million dollars. Of money. My point is, it's a big deal. I've never been, but money, time, work, you know. And I would like to go someday, but something about this year's posters clanged with me. Here, look at this one on the right. You see it, right? It's not just me? It's got that AI-y-ness, I don't even know how to articulate it.

Ok Krzysztof, you're off the hook.
Get back to sculpting bronze beardos
and being unpronounceable.

There's just that certain unnerving, je ne sais quoi am I looking at, about it. The artist's name is Krzysztof Bednarski. I looked them up and there a few people with that name. The first was a Polish photographer who is, you know, a photographer. Then there was a sculptor who used to design theatre posters. At first I thought this was him, but it kind of sounds like he hasn't done posters since the eighties. But the third guy--assuming he's a person and not a company--feels like the most likely candidate. On his site, he describes himself as "a multidisciplinary freelance creative director and collaborator, specializing in branding, visual identities, and motion design. [Who] crafts visual solutions for corporate and cultural projects." Which is 100% the kind of gibberish a person who would have no qualms about Chat GPT-ing up some art and calling it a day, would say. And while that's unfair of me to say, I don't think it's incorrect.

Above: something off-
putting and weirdly lit.

What's weird--other than the art, that is--is that Bednarski--again, assuming a person here--appears to be fully capable of not just AI-ing nonsense. In fact, he did so for OSF back in 2023 according to his website, and it was pretty good. Not everyone's cuppa, I'm sure, but way more interesting than the slapdash and smeary poster series this time around. So why did they, the Festival that is, even use this? Was it like a deadline thing and they had to go with whatever visual solution their freelance multidisciplinary brand crafter turned in? Or did they cheap out from the get-go and tell Bednarski "eh, just prompt us up something off-putting, and weirdly lit."

"Because this is cheaper and easier?"

-someone who's technically wrong

Which, I mean, anyone can do that, so why hire a Bednarski at all? Theatre is constantly in competition with other forms of entertainment. Forms of entertainment that are cheaper and easier, but people are choosing to drive or fly to Ashland to see actual humans perform plays written by actual humans. To sit in person, in a room with other actual humans, and to be gouged at the gift shop by actual humans. Why in the world would the Festival not insist on art by an actual human illustrator?

I don't know, this whole thing makes no sense to me. Just like Prince Hal's torso in the Henry IV image. Seriously, do yourself a favor and don't look too closely at it. Or at all.

You looked, didn't you? Heedless of my warning, you looked
and now you can't unsee it. You brought this upon yourself.