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Artist Bill Ayton: Ink Drawings, AI Prompts, and a Quarter Century Upstate

Episode 246: Artist Bill Ayton: Ink Drawings, AI Prompts, and a Quarter Century Upstate

Painter turned AI artist William T. Ayton on his augmented reality Tower of Babel, meeting his wife in a Madrid bar, and settling in Rhinebeck.

Show notes

Norm sits down with Rhinebeck artist William T. Ayton, known professionally as William T., to talk about his shift from traditional painting and ink drawing to AI-generated art. Ayton walks through how he prompts and edits images using Leonardo AI and defends the medium against critics who dismiss it as "AI slop." He discusses his augmented reality installation New Babel, a ten story virtual Tower of Babel built for Union Square Park to mark The New School's centennial, and a possible upcoming show at Tsinghua University in Beijing tied to a journal published by Leonardo, the arts and science organization run by his wife, Diana Ayton-Shenker.

They trace Ayton's path from a working class upbringing in England, through art school in Edinburgh and years teaching English in Madrid, where he met Diana, to the move upstate to Rhinebeck twenty five years ago, where he raised three children and now works out of a home studio.

Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org

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William T. Ayton

William T. Ayton

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