The "Death of Art" or a new tool?

There’s been a lot of back-lash about NFTs since its existence has gone mainstream. Even more so now that AI art has entered the chat. With DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion entering the market some “traditional artists” have naturally expressed this being the death of art or even some sort of art theft in their opinion. For years I’ve often wondered what it would be like to take the images from my head and bring them and bring them to life without having to devote 30 years of my life to training my hands to do so. By all means I respect the hard work and discipline that such art makes, but a part of me has always wanted to see the results right now. And the technology is finally moving in the direction of making those dreams come true.

How I use AI to make Pop Art

Much like how Marvel Comics were produced in the early days, where Stan Lee would pitch an idea, write a brief paragraph or even an outline to his talented roster of artists to bring us The Hulk, Avengers and Spider-Man. AI art puts you in that same seat. You simply direct what you want it to create and it will take what it can based off your description to get your results. Sometimes amazing, could bit a bit off or even an abomination all together. Writing prompts into AI itself is an art form. However, I personally don’t see this as being where the job ends. For me it’s a beginning. The same way I look at photo manipulation, glitch art, collage art, graffiti or music sampling. AI is simply digging up a piece of art from its own internal dimension, the AI metaverse as I call it. I will take a piece of work here and run it through another set up I’ve been borrowing in blender that allows me to apply some glitchy effects. Of course, I wound up discovering my own method and simply added a color map that I could work with as well as giving these images a 3D glasses like output effect. In a nutshell this is my formula for creating pop art. A sort of “glitch pop” if you will. A Campbells soup painting for the digital age.

AI art made from Stable Diffusion processed through Blender

Other techniques have been applied to AI art, such as animation. An experiment which I have come to enjoy myself just by animating a few frames into a gif. Coming up with themes, building a sci fi world out of AI generated gifs. Is this not we imagined as we were growing up? We wanted the future and its technology and now we are living with it. Even one of my most recent projects, “The Syndicate” is an AI, profile picture, generative art and music collection. This is music which I've produced myself from scratch, there’s no need to prove myself as an artist here, I know what I am capable of and who I am as an artist. And for the first time in a long time, I am having fun, it’s a new medium and it doesn’t just stop at letting the computer do all of the work. Whether this breaks you out of a creative block or gives you some reference, the full potential of AI entering the art scene has yet to come.

My Current Projects

"Hey, take my picture!"

Mister Reborn

project

Above is an experimental generative profile picture piece I made specifically for FX Hash. Originally tested on async art as a visual project, I wanted to bring some over to tezos. There's just a few backgrounds and handful of characters here. AI rendered images of basketball headed robots taking selfies around a city. The original prompt for the characters was "robot with a boombox for a head holding a basketball" go figure. The backgrounds were requested as a city being a mix between New York and Shanghai with a subtle cyberpunk aesthetic to it.