Jack the Dog, Artist

It's very hot again, and I also recently had the second round of one of those oldies' vaccinations against diseases with deceptively folksy names (shingles, in this case). Basically, I am not feeling 100% just now. Luckily, two old friends have come to the rescue, and presented me with the makings of a perfect post. Over to you, Andy and Phil:

 Hi Mike. I was making a fish pie the other day and put the pan that I'd poached the fish in on the floor so that Jack the dog could tidy it up. This is what he left behind. I took a photo because, superficially, it looked a bit like something you might have produced. I mentioned it to Phil who then asked the AI Claude to produce a pretentious artist's statement to go with it. This is what it came up with ....

VESSEL / THRESHOLD / FORGETTING Artist's Statement --- In this work I invite the viewer to confront the abject sublime — that liminal space between use and dissolution, between the domestic and the geological. The vessel, stripped of its instrumental function, becomes instead a cosmography: a self-contained universe in which entropy is not failure but language. The tannin striations recall both cave painting and satellite imagery, collapsing deep time into a single glance. We are simultaneously at the ceiling of Lascaux and in low Earth orbit. The pale cerulean foam — ephemeral, already gone by the time you see this — speaks to the impossibility of the present moment, the way experience leaves only its residue. The circular framing is not accidental. The eye is drawn inward in an inexorable spiral, mirroring our own psychological relationship with memory, with loss, with the things we leave to soak and then forget about. I work with found thermodynamic processes. I do not make — I witness. The brown ring at the periphery is the signature of time itself, and I refuse to clean it off. This piece exists in direct conversation with Richter, with Turrell, and with my own ongoing inquiry into what it means to be a body that makes mess and calls it living. The washing up can wait. --- (It's a dirty saucepan, isn't it.)

That, I have to say, is both hilarious and scarily good, no? "The eye is drawn inward in an inexorable spiral, mirroring our own psychological relationship with memory, with loss, with the things we leave to soak and then forget about" is particularly fine in its dry wit, I think. I am assured – as with a previous scarily good AI effort used by a friend on his blog – that "no humans were involved in post-production". Be afraid, you people who trade in art-bollocks, be very afraid. Also, I can see an artistic career opening up for Jack the Dog, with or without the aid of this sort of puff-piece.

Mind you, there is also that distinctly non-AI comment that "it looked a bit like something you might have produced"... Hmm. Are these guys having a laugh at my expense? I don't think so, but we've been friends for 50 years, so anything goes. But listen, Jack the Dog, you'll be needing a thick skin (as well as a cold wet nose) if you're going to go down this path: encouragement, appreciation, and doggie treats will be thin on the ground. So here's some from me:  Who's a good boy? You are, Jack, you're a very talented good boy! Yes, you are! Now get off the sofa and start licking out some more pans...