AI: Drawing the Line
RESEARCH & COLLABORATION
After a slow year, 2025 ended with a flurry of activity for Tamagata as we joined a multi-university research project funded by UKRI.
The postdoctoral research initiative is spearheaded by Responsible AI UK to examine how creative communities engage with artificial intelligence. Led by researchers from the University of Nottingham, University of Southampton, Open University, King's College London, and University of Warwick, the project addresses how artists are drawing boundaries around AI use in their work.
On 20 November, we met in Nottingham for a Research Knowledge Exchange event. Leo Crane presented The Masterpiece of Tamagata as a research subject. His talk centred on creativity as an irrational, emotional and instinctive process, in contrast to the logic of AI algorithms. He emphasised exploration through process, including the importance of ritual and preparation before the first mark is made. These aspects are absent from current AI datasets made of final output images.
Yet AI holds intriguing possibilities for artists, especially when limits are tested and a new visual language found. In Tamagata, we have used AI to help develop the Painted World sequences, where reality shifts. The video below explains our process.
An extract from The Masterpiece of Tamagata will be exhibited at City Arts, Nottingham, as part of the research project’s public engagement.
