They’ve Got Your Eyes

They’ve Got Your Eyes is a solo exhibition by Scottish artist Rachel Maclean, presenting a new body of film, painting and sculpture.

Critically drawing parallels between today’s AI boom and the Industrial Revolution, Maclean explores the way in which technological innovation reshapes society and how, in times of rapid change, wonder, fear, exploitation and fantasies of power take hold. Just as Victorian microscopes might have fueled a belief in fairies, today’s AI revolution blurs the boundaries between reality and illusion, also creating a race for power.

At the heart of the exhibition is the single-channel film They’ve Got Your Eyes, created using AI models trained on the artist’s own image and archive. The film follows a gentleman who seems to bridge the Enlightenment and the age of advanced AI. He discovers a means to generate fairies which sparks a rivalry driven by ambition, jealousy and delusions of grandeur. The work draws visitors into an uncanny world where authorship, identity and machine agency are blurred. Extending beyond the screen, AI generated 3D-prints and painting bring the film’s imagery to life, creating a landscape that is both humorous and unsettling. It makes us think how the fascination with scientific progress can overshadow concerns about AI’s fierce expansion.