As a lifelong painter and technology enthusiast, I’m captivated by new mediums. None more so than the untapped potential of the newest frontier: AI generative art.
I’ll admit, at first I couldn’t help but feel a bit lost. After years of painting, innovating styles, exploring the works of masters, I’d created maybe 1000 pieces (with varying degrees of success). Yet, AI, with hyper powered GPUs, can create thousands of iterations in a matter of minutes. More than I’d create in a lifetime.
Has art lost its meaning?
Well, here we are, and the art world must face its own reckoning.
I dove in. Hours turned into days which turned into weeks. I was pulled to explore the medium with the human mind as the canvas and AI, the paintbrush. What started as a casual exploration quickly turned into an undertaking of personal growth and reflection…
Generative art explores the future of a society hardwired with human computer interaction. The process is dynamic and the outcome collaborative. Left to its own devices, the AI art rests forever with a blank canvas. Yet with the butterfly effect in action with even basic inputs, masterpieces are born.
On first glance, AI art seems so familiar yet otherworldly. Even the brightest computer scientists find themselves baffled by inexplicable creations that feel more human than human-made art. The sheer volume and creativity that emerged brought up many questions about the future of art.
Here's my key insights from the process of creating AI Art:
Lesson 1: Art is experiencing Moore’s Law
Electricity paved the way for computing. Moore’s law is paving the path for AI.
Humans struggle to predict the future of exponential growth.
This exponential pace of AI (and it’s rapid iteration times) are changing the face of art for good. I was blown away by the surprising creativity of the outputs. The joy of waiting for the piece to emerge became quite the dopamine rush. And the pieces that emerged became quite meaningful over time, which compelled me to share my journey.
The sheer volume of ideas is mind boggling, which would have taken forever to organically come up with. One shocking reality that I faced early on is the algorithms were able to generate breathtaking works that individually would have taken me months to complete as a painter. While the learning curve and training with data sets took many long nights, once the setup was ideal, the algorithm could generate interesting output quite easily. It gave me a taste of the power of machine learning and AI. I’ve concluded that it is impossible to compete on speed or sheer iterative output as a painter.
I let my initial assumptions go about making art and let the process take over.
Lesson 2: Input > Output
The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keyboard keys at random for an infinite amount of time will surely produce the works of Shakespeare.
What part of the art becomes sacred in a world where a computer can produce a piece that a painter may labor on for weeks? Where does human creativity come in?
While the outputs could be generated quickly once the setup was there, the process of coming away with inspiring final work was quite intensive.
- Inspiration: Much of the art is in the inspiration itself and selecting the concept.
- Playing with Algorithms: Playing with various generative adversarial networks and modifying open-source ML code. Joy of new tools and seeing where human ingenuity has taken us.
- Training with Datasets: This meant documenting my portfolio of work, sifting through hundreds of pieces and putting together various combinations as data training sets, as well as other external image sets to create the vibe I was looking for.
- Pushing the Direction: Assessing the outputs and subsequently fiddling with new inputs to push the output in the direction you desire, until you reach something you’re happy with. This process could be quite laborious and frustrating.
Lesson 3: Curation is King
In Latin, the word “curar” means “to take care.” Part of the process is selecting which pieces have the soul. Curation in the traditional art world has always been important, but with AI art it becomes synonymous with the art process itself. When AI can generate thousands of output images, you must decide among these which are “complete” and tell the story. In the beginning, I was sifting through my outputs looking for a piece to fit the story I had in my mind, but this often led to frustration. More often, the “aha!” moment came from being lost in the joy of experimentation, and a piece would be there radiating it’s story.
Lesson 4: Intentionality Matters
In a world where more tooling is open-source, what makes one piece unique from another is the artist’s intention. Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ "Untitled" (Perfect Lovers) illustrates the importance of intentionality. His piece is defined by two running clocks placed next to each other. Anyone can put two synchronized clocks together, but the work is made meaningful by the idea of lovers slowly falling out of sync, and even one stopping before the other. It’s made even more meaningful when you understand that this piece was created shortly after the artist’s lover passed away from AIDS.
Lesson 5: Embrace Randomness
You can tweak the inputs and algorithms, but it’s impossible to control the final outcome. In fact, the beauty is in the unexpected, the randomness. I found that over time, I actually preferred pieces with slight visual randomness that indicated an algorithm’s work rather than perfect pieces that look man-made. You must give up your desire to know the final outcome. Once you have embraced randomness and given up placing happiness in the output, freedom is there for you.
The subversive process of creating art through AI made me think deeply about the nature of art itself. Thank you for reading! Through the links below, feel free to follow my journey into the abyss of AI art.
xx kami was here
About the Artist: Kami Was Here
Kami Was Here is a visual artist exploring the vast medium of AI and technology enabled art. Kami are the living natural spiritual essences that reside in things, such as the mountain god, forest spirit, or river mote. Inspired by the natural world, the artist’s work has been displayed in museums, congressional offices, and private residences.
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