MEGAN KOTH

Skin Deep: 2022-present

Skin-Deep simply started as an exploration into using (what were at the time) early AI image models (specifically, Dall-E) to create what I call uncanny skincare advertisements. These early AI models were (and largely still are) known for creating unsettling anatomical distortions (especially with hands) that wound up lending themselves to an ambiguous, painterly exploration. The result are images that look like they could be stills from the skincare magazine advertisements I grew up with in the early 2000s, but the anatomical distortions also date them as belonging to this particular age of AI imagery. The tension between the idealized beauty of advertising images of the past, and the implications of the newfound idealization capabilities of AI, are entangled within one image.