Art That Reflects The Times

This would probably be my biggest statement piece, however, most of my work attempts to convey some message or another...

Where I can certainly relate to your views regarding the effects technology is having on society, here's an alternate perspective.
It's long but well worth the time imo...

This is the only statement piece I have about life today. Sometimes I wake from nightmares about what we are doing, and the hatred I see for each other in the news and yes, the way technology (which I funnily enough love and use daily) has completely taken over. One of my biggest worries are the use of the Earths resources for our selfish needs and the fact that every car made results in peoples suffering (I am talking about those involved in harvesting the goods needed to create them in the first place) and the pollution etc caused by them



This is a statement on how greed and corruption are destroying the environment and the earth with no regard for the future as time runs out for any hope of fixing things even though the solutions are at hand.

I first met Geb in a dream. Stories depict him as a king, bull and other personas but, in my dream he was a serpent.

The world is a precious place and Geb was angry.

Geb was the Egyptian god of the Earth. It was believed in ancient Egypt that Geb's laughter were earthquakes and that he allowed crops to grow. In my dream he had set a time on man.

In my painting of this representational subconscious imagery I show Geb as he was in that dream. Proud. Angry. One hand at one with the earth, his charge, and the other holding the card of the Afterlife and an hourglass held together by two snakes...one dark and one light...yin and yang...evil and good...night and day.

The hourglass is running out.

I am not sure if this fits your original post properly so will remove it if you would like me to

Taken on the streets of New York, I found this teddy bear with a cup, it looked like it had been there for awhile. There was no one around the bear, no signs, just a cup with change in it and the teddy bear.

nono this is all very good - personally I fear that technology will get to the point where people will get stupid and no longer have the skills to use it responsibly. It won't be an assistant, it will be the caretaker of our being. One must ask if our skyscrapers and jets and technology are who we are, then we as ourselves have degraded to nothing - no potential to evolve ourselves.

As a spiritual leader I teach that a society that is technologically advanced but spiritually lacking is in fact a very primitive race, for they have not solved the problems of only seeing the world through the eyes of the singular ego, and thus all technology built upon this selfish lens will be in itself self-serving. Only when society is built off the collective ego - society seen as an organism where everyone is a cell and must work to benefit each other can a lasting spiritually based society endure.

I did write this poem back in the day that goes along these lines:

Empty soulless eyes filled with strife,
connected to devices that attempt to simulate life
A simulation within a simulation,
meant to stimulate but only placate and frustrate
A generation of lambs led willingly to their demise,
never knowing better, forever none the wise
Their freedom twice removed, severed from it's source, the river diverted to another course

Sleepers walking, forever in a dream,
a dream not quite stitched properly at the seams
Walking food, not aware of it's true destination
to feed those who cannot feel emotion
Doomed never to awake; to shrivel and die
to questions their life's meaning, and never find out why
While others grow them like cows - the crops in a farmer's field his machine systematically plows

Their eyes are sealed shut their muscles atrophy
devoid of all caring, gaining selfishness in place of empathy
The teachings are twisted, manipulated for control
what once was itself is now a small part of the whole
Puppets dance before their eyes - they offer compromise,
in exchange for willingness to overlook their lies
A Lack of cohesion is their goal - an introverted, angry world is a much much easier world to control

Zombies in range, strange and deranged
unwilling to help and incapable of change
Mindless and demanding - their physical demands extrenuating,
they all walk among us judging and hating
Our friends and our foes, a cocktail of woes
their souls in their cockpits, and both in their death throes
Choking on their vacuous lives, each a unique nest where the dark soul of snakes and monsters thrives

The shadow puppeteer pulls his strings and makes them dance
and from behond him one casts a darker glance
In a world turned upside down; emotions are to learn, not to own,
where beings exist on time that we loan
a loan long run out - their salvation always in doubt,
but their fate not something we need longer care about
Forget them we must, our own fates we must trust - let the light of our sun turn the vampires to dust

Let their world be destroyed, their universe torn asunder,
put an end to the plunder and stand back in wonder
They made their choice in the end, no longer our job to mend,
the limbs that they sever or the minds that they bend
They feed like a wraith, on all living matter,
our world is not their platter - extinguished to make them fatter
They cheat and they lie - they holler and cry, for if we wake up they know this will end and they'll die.


---Shawn Dall
ShawnDall.com

Some art reflects the present and past equally. History does repeat itself.
As far as technology goes artificial intelligence is the scariest.

artificial intelligence is the scariest because you have beings of limited intelligence trying to create beings of full intelligence - how can one fully recreate life when they don't fully even understand what makes THEMSELVES work?

The best that happens is you get it to do the primitive things you want it to - the worst that happens is, as many things do, the artificial intelligence realizes that what is most inefficient is humans themselves and as it perfects itself it eliminates humans as the problem - a skynet.

It will be the death knoll when humanity creates an artificial intelligence that forever seeks to improve itself.

---Shawn Dall
ShawnDall.com

This piece is a scene from the book of Revelation chapter 10. The angel is warning that there shall be no more delay. Read the description to read the whole chapter. The book of Revelation is full of pointing out the evils of the day, or our day.

"as artists we don't always seek to make a statement anymore - whether it is an ethical one, moral one, political one, etc."

Many artists have a fear of taking a chance...to step out of their comfort zone to make a bold graphic statement....fear of being criticized or ostracized.

Nothing wrong with it. But they will never be the movers and shakers that make it to the top.

Self replicating and growing AI is upon us and not far off at all. It will be interesting to see if we survive.

if we don't we will only have ourselves to blame.

---Shawn Dall
ShawnDall.com

A depiction that shows the before and after of the outcome done to Mother Nature by man. And what holds the future on mankind of its effects done. The Left side shows Mother Nature and when earth is still new and pristine, while the right side shows the effects done to Mother Nature when man slowly destroys planet earth. The middle shows a TREE and inside is a child as representation of mankind and the question is what holds the future of the upcomming generation if man contineously and surely destroys our only planet. Time is running out and we must save planet earth.

TRANSGRESSION TO MOTHER NATURE

a very old pic in highschool that I did - I never put it up for sale cuz well, I dunno, it feels a bit primitive to me now hehe:

Human versus nature



this goes back to my gr. 13 highschool year - one of my art projects on symbolism - even then I was heavily into anime already - this is going back probably 14 to 15 years?

This is human vs nature. The # 7 is prominant here - winter, spring, summer, fall, death by nature, and death by mankind represent the cycles.

On the left side you see nature taking over humanity - on the right side you see humanity taking over nature.

Anarchy is overlapped with peace, male overlapped with female - and in the corners leaves and bouquets represent nature, and hearts and shurikens represent man - intermingling and living in harmony.

some of the deaths of nature include, fire, lava, lightning.

some of the deaths of man include logging, the corrosive hand of man, and the future desolation of mass graves, and a landscape like the moon.

it's not the BEST art quality when compared to todays standards - but I still had a lot of fun doing it :)