TV aerials were not common in Daniel O’Connell’s day so what’s one doing in a new postage stamp commemorating the 250th anniversary of his birth?
The An Post stamp depicts the Liberator’s triumphant procession in a gilded chariot through Dublin following his release from Richmond prison in 1844.
Unusually, in the top-right corner of the stamp, on a chimney in the panorama of 19th-century Dublin, is a TV aerial, many decades before the invention of the television.
Some members of the public contacted An Post following the stamp’s launch to complain the aerial might be a product of artificial intelligence (AI) given that AI-generated images often include historical or physical anomalies.
RM Block
Not so, says David Rooney, one of the country’s best-known graphic artists, who created the image.
“The inclusion of the tiny TV aerial was of course deliberate and not a mistake on my part,” he told The Irish Times.
“I thought it would be interesting to allude to and imagine the impact the great communicator Daniel O’Connell’s mass rallies would have had if they had been televised.
“I was greatly taken by the fantastical and surreal elements in his pageantry.”
The picture was created using Rooney’s preferred technique of scraperboard before being digitally scanned and coloured.
“I’ve been almost 40 years working as a professional illustrator and I’ve often included surreal elements in my work,” said Rooney.
“I guess in the AI environment we now inhabit these may be misread. I put a lot work into these stamps, which I’m very proud of.”
The world of illustration has been disrupted by the arrival of AI, with many artists losing income amid widespread protests against its use by publishers.
An Post said Rooney’s stamp included “a ‘visual signal’ to link to the very modern, global range and impact of O’Connell”.
The Liberator’s methods of communications were “thoroughly modern – hence the inclusion of a sort of anachronism to link those very points”, it said.
An Post noted that the company was “one of the most prolific and constant commissions of Irish art and design.
“We do not use AI in stamp design.”
