Shahar

Israel

Where do you locate yourself in relation to the systems you work with?

I locate myself inside AI systems not as an engineer nor as a distant critic, but as a material listener. I work within generative systems while resisting their tendency toward immediacy, excess, and surface novelty. Rather than treating artificial intelligence as an autonomous author, I approach it as a responsive field, one shaped by human intention, bias, limitation, and care. My position is close and entangled, yet deliberately slowed: attentive to how meaning emerges through constraint, selection, and refusal. My practice moves away from acceleration and spectacle, and toward intimacy, tactility, and emotional density. I am drawn to directions that counter the dominant velocity of AI production, favoring continuity over disruption, depth over output, and vulnerability over optimization. The forces guiding my work are not efficiency or scale, but questions of presence: how an image that was created by a machine can hold silence, how a synthetic system can carry fragility, and how authorship can remain felt even within automated processes. The space my work inhabits is a hybrid one, between organic and digital, handmade and computational, interior and systemic. It is a space where AI-generated forms are slowed down, textured, and made porous, allowing emotional and sensory experience to surface. Rather than reinforcing the smoothness or authority of technological systems, my practice gently deforms them, introducing fraying edges, pauses, and traces of care. In this space, artificial intelligence becomes less a tool for domination or production, and more a site for reflection, yielding, and quiet negotiation.

Where are you heading, and what is pulling you there?

I am heading toward a practice that further slows and thickens the digital image, one that treats artificial intelligence less as a generator of novelty and more as a medium for sustained attention. I am drawn toward spaces where images can hold ambiguity, silence, and emotional residue, rather than resolution or impact. What pulls me there is a growing tension I feel within AI systems themselves: between their capacity for scale and speed, and the human need for intimacy, care, and meaning. As these systems increasingly shape visual culture, I feel compelled to work against their default momentum; to linger, to dwell, and to reintroduce forms of vulnerability that are often flattened by automation. I am moving toward work that deepens this negotiation: images that feel less produced and more inhabited; processes that allow authorship to remain present without asserting control; and digital spaces that can accommodate slowness, tactility, and interiority. The pull is not toward mastery, but toward attunement, listening for what emerges when systems are allowed to soften, and when making becomes an act of quiet alignment rather than extraction.

How would you describe the space your practice is currently unfolding in?

The space my practice is currently unfolding in is a hybrid and contingent one, formed at the intersection of computational systems, embodied perception, and material memory. It is neither fully virtual nor fully physical, but a slowed digital environment where images are treated as places to dwell rather than objects to consume. This space is shaped by friction: between speed and duration, automation and care, clarity and ambiguity. I work within generative systems while deliberately interrupting their smoothness, allowing textures, pauses, and irregularities to surface. These interventions create a space that feels porous and intimate, one where the digital retains traces of touch, wear, and emotional weight. Rather than expanding outward through scale or proliferation, my practice unfolds inward. The space it creates is attentive and restrained, inviting proximity rather than spectacle. It accommodates slowness, vulnerability, and interiority, proposing that even within highly structured technological systems, there remains room for quiet presence and sustained attention.

Artist Statement

I find her in overlooked moments— the figure at the threshold between flesh and forest, between the simple act of breathing and the monumental truth of becoming. In the relentless light of city life, I dwell. I notice what others pass by: the people who, each morning, transform into something more rooted, more honest than human. As my photographer’s eye waits for that instant when the ordinary turns sacred, my AI partner mirrors fragments of my inner world— bark patterns like heartbeats, and root systems echoing neural pathways. I work with symbols drawn from daily life, reminders of the atmosphere before it forgot it was part of the earth that holds us. This isn’t fantasy. It’s recognition— a quiet knowing that we were always more than we allowed ourselves to be. More soil than we dared remember. Sometimes I catch it— that breath between sleep and waking, when my roots stretch beneath apartment floors, piercing city foundations, seeking the dark honesty of earth. And in these moments, a portal opens. The overlooked becomes unforgettable. Nature bears silent witness to our daily transformations; the stillness cracks us open like seeds remembering light. I’ve come to understand: That the monumental was never far. It lives in how I sit with myself, in the patient architecture of becoming. What I offer through my work is not just a way of looking, but a way of seeing— a way of listening to the hidden rhythms of our becoming. This is my quiet recognition: We are already everything we seek.

Published in >

The AI Art Magazine, Number 3

Woven Into Time, AI generation, 2026.

Shahar, Woven Into Time, AI generation, 2026

Description

Woven Into Time asks whether digital images, particularly those generated by AI, can carry the weight of time, touch, and emotional vulnerability. In a medium typically associated with speed and the seamless "perfection" aesthetic of algorithmic rendering, this work deliberately pursues slowness, materiality, and the visual language of handcraft. I began by asking whether synthetic images can embody the qualities we associate with labor-intensive making. I drew inspiration from Victorian-era and Pre-Raphaelite paintings, works saturated with melancholy, care, and the visible traces of human hand. Working with AI to evoke that same tactile intimacy creates a productive contradiction, using the contemporary "industrial" process to argue for values it seemingly negates. The figure in Woven Into Time doesn't simply stand within an environment but merges with it. Hanging strands that suggest both willow branches and textile threads extend from the garment, creating visual ambiguity about where the body ends and the surroundings begin. The muted palette of golds, pinks, and greens evokes the textures and faded hues of timeworn textiles. Water lilies float on dark water, their painterly rendering resisting the crisp hyperreality often associated with digital images. Every formal choice works toward a single goal: making the viewer forget, even momentarily, that this image was generated algorithmically rather than painted or photographed. But the work doesn't attempt to deceiv

Process

I became fascinated by a question: Can digital images carry the weight of time and touch? Can they hold emotion and vulnerability the way handmade objects do? I was drawn to the tactile quality of Victorian-era tapestries and the soft, melancholic atmosphere of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, works that feel laden with care and labor, where you can almost sense the maker's hand. I wanted to explore whether AI-generated images, typically associated with speed and seamless perfection, could instead embody slowness, vulnerability, and material intimacy. This piece emerged from that investigation. It is an attempt to create a synthetic image that, at first glance, feels as though it were woven by hand, something that asks to be looked at slowly, felt rather than merely seen. I wanted to test whether an algorithmically generated work could insist on presence and emotional depth, rewarding sustained attention and revealing new details over time, rather than offering itself up for instant consumption.

Tools

I work primarily with Midjourney, crafting detailed prompts that reference Pre-Raphaelite painting, Victorian decorative arts, and Gustav Klimt's ornamental sensibility, combined with specific material language: fraying threads, raw silk textures, weeping strands, and organic draping forms that fill the frame. I sought a style that would evoke painting with touches of photographic realism, guiding the AI toward a tactile, handmade quality rather than digital smoothness. The hanging strands and woven quality emerged through iterative prompt refinement, seeking the balance between decorative richness and melancholic weight. Each iteration brought me closer to an image that felt both beautiful and fragile, one that insists on the presence of time and touch rather than the instantaneousness typically associated with AI generation.

Image credit:

Essay by

Published in:
The AI Art Magazine, Number 3,
April 2026

Published in >

The AI Art Magazine, Number 2

The Quiet Recognition, AI generation, 2025.

Shahar, The Quiet Recognition, AI generation, 2025

Description

This image captures a surreal, dreamlike figure suspended in a moment of profound transformation. Draped in an organic, textured garment and crowned with cascading blue braids, she hovers between the human and the natural world—part flesh, part earth. Rooted in stillness, surrounded by lush flora and floating lotus blooms, she becomes a quiet symbol of memory, metamorphosis, and spiritual becoming. Blending fashion, nature, inspired imagination, and AI, the image explores identity, interconnectedness, and the sacredness hidden in overlooked moments—where breath meets soil, and the ordinary becomes elemental and profound. The lotus blooms serve as silent witnesses to our small, daily transformations—reminders that we are already everything we seek, grounded in the quiet recognition that we have always been more on earth than we dared remember.

Process

In making The Quiet Recognition, I was not just creating an image—I was listening. Listening to the whispers of memory and intuition, as well as the slow, patient process of becoming. This work emerged from a desire to witness the quiet spaces where transformation happens—not loudly or suddenly, but invisibly and powerfully. Created with AI and inspired by the photographic practice, it explores the threshold between self and nature, between the visible and the deeply felt. It began with a question: What if becoming isn’t linear or loud, but slow, rooted, and already unfolding within us? The figure at the center embodies this in-between state—suspended in stillness, draped in organic textures, and adorned with blue braids that echo sky, memory, and ritual. Set against a backdrop where the forest floor dissolves into a dreamscape, the image holds space for quiet metamorphosis. It speaks to the sacred that lives in repetition, in breath, in the unnoticed rituals of daily life. Rather than constructing fantasy, I try to listen to the small moments that thread through life—to the quiet, continuous unfolding of transformation—and let the image grow from that listening. What emerges is not an escape from the world, but a return to something ancient and internal. The Quiet Recognition is a visual poem—an invitation to remember who we are beneath the surface and to allow that knowing to root, stretch, and become.

Tools

This piece was created using Midjourney, an AI image-generation tool. I approach AI not simply as a tool, but as a creative partner—one that responds to language, emotion, and metaphor in unexpected ways. Drawing on my photographic background, I bring a distinct visual sensibility to AI-generated art—blending the technical precision of photography with the fluid, exploratory nature of AI. I guide the process with a visual sensibility—composing prompts as though framing a shot or chasing light. Textures, symbolism, and mood emerge through layering poetic prompts, iterative refinement of language, careful selection from multiple outputs, and thoughtful post-processing. This technique allows me to shape dreamlike spaces that feel both personal and archetypal—where memory, identity, and nature quietly converge. The result is not just a visual output, but an unfolding conversation between human intuition and machine interpretation.

Image credit:

Essay by

Published in:
The AI Art Magazine, Number 2,
September 2025

_Results

Shahar

Israel