Salon 48 // Adaptation

Okay, welcome everyone. Today is July 20th, 2022. It is actually the 53rd anniversary of the first moon landing. So I think that's a nice connection here to our technology-based artistry that we all have here. And this is actually salon number 48. So we're quickly approaching 50 of these. So I think that's pretty cool. So today's subject, oh, I guess I'll introduce myself. I'm Michael Pierre Price. I'm kind of sitting in hosting and recording today as Colin is hopefully enjoying family time out in Hawaii. So. Anyway, welcome.

Michael Pierre Price

We are going to be talking about the subject of adaptation in probably a number of different areas, both in terms of how artists adapt using technology to help maybe supplement the way that they work within any limitations, adaptation in terms of how technology itself has changed over the decades, especially since. Some of us who've been around to see some pretty marvelous advances of technology over the years. I think we have some good stories and hopefully potentially some good artwork to share in that idea.

Michael Pierre Price

So without, I guess, much further ado, for those of you who are interested to share some work, use the raise hand functionality at the bottom of the screen. And I'll just give you a little bit of a quick overview of what we're doing. And I will call on you in the order of raised hands. So looks like Renata has volunteered to go first here. So Renata, I'll give you five or 10 minutes. And if nobody else raises their hand, you could probably go on even longer. So but anyway, thanks for volunteering to go first today.

You're welcome. It's my pleasure. And. I'm talking about adaptation in the sense of how a novel can be adapted for the screen or an image in this case. So this is a work that I did for Negin. It's not a work that was generated like this. In other words, it comes from this. And there is some software that can do captures of. Captures of. Animations. And that's where that one came from. So when I looked at this one, you can see there are these shapes that look like a column in a cloud of some sort. And those are my custom brushes that I make. So these are adaptations from graphic novels by a Belgian artist named Hergé. His actual name was Georges Rémy, but it's it was a short name. So it's a short name. And I'm able to make these by taking a frame from one of his pages and using software, create a brush that has, as you see, it has a kind of at the ends, it tapers at the ends.

Renata Janiszewska

And with pressure, you can make it wider or less so. And you can see him tantize. And the phone booth at the bottom in England and at the top, you have the ship from Red Rackham's Treasure. And there's that column that I pointed out to you in the previous image. And the one on the bottom right is a train station scene.

Renata Janiszewska

This is a different. A different sort of situation where I've made a stage set and I fill it with either my own iconography. Which are I call them elements and they're biomorphic abstractions. Or I use more realistic icons like the lemon and the woman's face, the tree. The face again. At the bottom, you can see three of those elements.

Renata Janiszewska

And then the last way the stage becomes cinema and it becomes animated. So and then. Another another way that the work adapts to a different medium or a different format. This is a pretty successful image that I just made a few days ago. It's an amalgam of a number of different ones. And it's a cake with an olive tree.

Renata Janiszewska

And there's another treatment of it. So adapted into the form of what looks like a bit of an etching. And there's another element put over top of it. And there it is adapted into abstraction again. Where you don't see you don't read the images. You just see color. It's like a wash. And here's some dark a dark view of it.

Renata Janiszewska

And this is a screen capture of an animation using that image. And I'm going to show you a little bit of that. And you can see in the bottom left how clear the multifaceted element is. And in the background, it's a little more blurry because it's moving. But because animation is all in 4K, the screen captures can look really clear. And so I'm closing my presentation with this image of the cake that has been morphed by an animation. And I'm going to show you a little bit of the animation software.

And that's it.

Way cool. Thank you. Yeah.

I missed. Did you say what program you were using for the first slide with the different brushes? Oh, okay.

That's a that's a still image from an animation. And the software that I'm using is called effects.

Yes, that's.

Thank you.

Any volunteers to follow Renata here? Well, I just wanted to please raise your hand.

Oh, I'm sorry. I just had a comment. Okay. Okay. Not yet. That was great. Renata was a really cool series of images and a great example of adaptation. Kind of morphing from one type of style of imagery or, you know, execution of graphically of an idea and then morphing it or adapting it for another genre or idiom along the graphic spectrum. So it's cool. I use that word a lot. I didn't realize. But yeah, it's a good. It works.

Thank you, Victor. And I, I think all of us use so many different formats, sometimes for the same image.

I love your work, Renata.

Thank you very much. And then I will spell that up for you. I'm pretty sure it's spelled E-F-E-K-A-T-A.

Oh, thank you.

You're welcome. I'm always happy to share information with you.

Okay. It looks kind of quiet here. Oh, yay. Hey, Greg. I'll go for it. Okay. Your screen is off right now. Okay. Well, I'll get that fixed.

So I am going to go ahead and stop recording. I think you mentioned something about loosely interpretive. Yes. Fit for adaptation. So I'll try and contort my process to fit that as best I can. Tell me if the screen share worked.

Not yet. Oh. Looks good. I'm seeing myself on your screen. Okay, good.

I'm going to go ahead and stop recording. So just to give a quick overview, I do algorithmic art. So I work in JavaScript, and I come up with a concept for a composition, and then I write a computer program in JavaScript that basically just runs in the browser, in a browser. And then I create a JPEG file from that. Generally I print them, but I do some just like some web applications with them. And my inspiration is really kind of whimsical. So as you can see from the cover page of my website, I'm kind of all over the place as far as what subject matter I want to work with. And I kind of go back and forth between abstract and some representational compositions. But in the past few months, one of the things I started working on was, is the screen sharing working? Yeah.!

Lee Schnaiberg

Okay. I started working on just a more basic abstraction than some of the pieces that I normally do. Some of the algorithms that I write, I would say, are loosely based on some evolutionary processes, which I suppose in a way is not even loosely suggestive of adaptation. And so this series was really just a very simple arrangement of rectangles. That went over a patterned background that was just kind of a random algorithm that created some interest to the color field shapes. And I was really kind of like channeling sort of a Rothko kind of composition in some of these, but trying to put a little bit more complexity into it. And I really liked these.

Lee Schnaiberg

Playing with what the composition might turn into if I, if I were to do a lot of work with these and try to keep them going. So I pushed it further. And so this was the original series. And then I'll just show a few more. But really we're just talking about a very basic arrangement of rectangles. But then what's going on in Lake where you're seeing this is that I'll draw a rectangle over a rectangle in slightly different dimensions. And then I'll use some different algorithms that will blend the red, green, and blue color values mathematically to create essentially different blend modes like you would use in Photoshop, like color burn or color dodge or difference and those kind of things. So really just mathematically combining the colors.

Lee Schnaiberg

So then I took this basic composition based on rectangles rectangles and came up with a slightly more elaborate version where this is the basis without any of the color blending where I'm actually laying the colors right on top of each other without doing any sort of mathematical combination of them. So this gives you an idea of the simplicity of what's going on and this is where I feel like it ties into evolution because we see so many things in nature that like the patterns on butterflies and the patterns on actually a lot of insects and birds and different creatures that mimic other creatures or create camouflage so I started seeing how I could take this and with the blending of those I started getting a much more complicated composition such as this one and then just like in evolution there are only a few items that actually kind of stand out and so every once in a while I was starting to see faces and creatures that were emerging from this incredibly simple arrangement of rectangles like that one I showed you earlier with the orange and blue and I'll flip through these quickly because there are a couple in here that really stand out you start to see some faces emerge and then definitely in this one here where I've taken out some of the made it more monochrome and trying to find a good one here this one I love because as soon as it came out of the iteration I realized it kind of looked like a lioness standing at a podium or something like that grasping a book or grasping the podium sorry I'm flipping through quickly I'm looking for a couple good ones here where was it oh this one here I thought was kind of fascinating made me think of some sort of Mayan lobster King but again it's really just what's going on in here is some sort of random assortment of these rectangles getting mathematically blended together and then I started seeing these sort of!

Lee Schnaiberg

I thought was kind of beautiful but also in a way a little bit like I also thought it was a little bit cliche but I found these fascinating and then from that step I decided okay so what if I take it and I put them in more of a radial symmetry and so from there that went to what I'm calling here rosette for lack of a better word rosette for lack of a better name but where's the good one this is it here I think so this taking the same pattern here and then spinning it around on an octagonal matrix and then if you look in I don't know how I can't remember how high a resolution this is but it's fascinating to me that these octagonal resolution this is but it's fascinating to me that these octagonal Then again, these faces started showing up all the way around.

Lee Schnaiberg

These sort of like screeching tigers or whatever they are, built out of these basic rectangles. And so that's really where I've been going with playing with this. I've moved on from that to something else, and I'd be willing to talk about that as well because it's completely different, but that's about all I wanted to share at this point.

Wow.

Wow.

Thanks, Greg. That was really, really fascinating, and that hits at a lot of my experimentation too, and the notion of evolution and adaptation for me actually go hand in hand. And I think it's that experimentation that happens in the universe around us all the time. So way cool.

Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's fascinating how if you delve a little bit into the chemistry behind pigmentation and some creatures' skin patterning and that sort of thing, some really simple geometric forms, but then I love to use anything that uses the term emergence. It's like something starts to come out of something that really there was no intentionality behind it. Right. There was no design. But then there's something greater comes out of it, and it's kind of fascinating to see that.

Yeah. And what I find really interesting with that as well is that simple rules can create magnificently complex forms. And I think people, that quality of emergence, that's where I think a lot of times people have a hard time not realizing how big the universe is and how long it's been going. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that's been really interesting for me is that there's this idea that things are headed in a certain direction. Now that's just us not being able to have a big enough imagination on the cauldron that the universe is constantly making things. Right.

And I agree. And I think it's because it kind of stinks like something from nothing. And when people see something like that, their nose wrinkles and the hair on the back of their neck goes up. And they think, okay, this isn't true. This can't be.

Yeah, precisely. That was that I loved. I loved that about what you were showing, because to me that shows it in a very stark and very tangible way. So both artistic and also educational at the same time. Thank you. Okay. Come on. Who else wants to come next?

Anybody? Okay.

Well, then, if you're gonna do that to me, I guess I'll volunteer. And then hopefully somebody else will decide to come in. But so, as some of you may know, I have been. Experimenting. With. Language based. AI. Most recently. And for me, this has definitely been an evolutionary adaptable. Quality to what I've been working on using AI.

Michael Pierre Price

And I've been doing. I've been trying to do something really challenging on my end. And that is to use. The complexity of language. To actually generate. Some qualitative. Imagery that is somewhat surreal and somewhat abstract. So that it isn't necessarily. Tangible in a direct way, but almost like dreamlike qualities to the imagery.

Michael Pierre Price

So that the images. Allude to potentially something. But it isn't quite exactly what you. What you would expect. And so for me. What I find in language is the complexity of language. The. Sensibilities that come through in the way we say things. Where. One at one of the things that I've been fortunate at being multilingual. Is that you realize that the way you think about the way you say things. Sort of in, in cases you in a certain way of thinking and a certain way of expressing things. Whether it's. Like in French, you've got, you've got.

Michael Pierre Price

Nouns that are either male or female. And the way we say things in English, you've got a noun, a verb and an object. And so we, we tend to separate things into objects. Having been around. Some of my indigenous elders and learning language, the Ojibwe language. And such is that things are related to in very relational.

Michael Pierre Price

Type ways. So. You have the notion of familial context. With other. Other elements of the world around you. And so that creates an intimacy there. And so for all, all of these things and the ambiguity. The ambiguous nature of language. Are all complexities. That I'm trying to. Toy with, with this AI to see if I can come up with a visual language. That expresses my concepts and my ideas.

Michael Pierre Price

And so I'm just going to go through a few of these. These are all experimentation still right now that I'm playing through.

And they're.

Based on ideas like dreams. And. The. The. This, this one I called them the junkyard of monstrous dreams. And, and so the idea that. Oftentimes what we dream about. Continues to stay with us in one way or another. And. And there's the notion of the Aboriginals. Having the sense of the dream time. And that being more real than our waking lives. And so I'm. What I'm experimenting with through this adaptation. That we've now created for ourselves of artificial intelligence and how. We can use that to adapt artwork and, and to, for me to help create artwork. Through.

Michael Pierre Price

Words to me, I find extremely, extremely fascinating. And I'm, I'm just starting to scratch the surface that I'm hoping. To continue on with this, to get it to be more and more. Meaningful and more and more interesting. Part of my. Part of my interest. Is. In being able to. To. Find through a number of friends of mine. More powerful technology, or I should say more powerful hardware. And some programming expertise.

Michael Pierre Price

So that I might be able to work on the imagery. At a much larger pixel scale. A lot of what you're seeing that I just showed you here. Is still for me. Very limited in size. To about a million and a half pixels in total, which is. You know, like 1500 pixels by a thousand pixels. So for those of us who work digitally, we know that's not a very large image. And if I'm wanting to create things that might be, you know, 40 inches by 60 inches. I want to have a lot more pixels to be able to create larger pieces of work. So anyway, that's my. That's my contribution. To that. To today's discussion on adaptability. So.

Michael Pierre Price

I don't know anybody have any questions on what I just showed. Yeah. Victor. Yeah.

I had a comment that Michael. Yeah. Great work. And. And it reminds me of, you know, like Salvador Dali, but. Abstracted. You know, it has a surrealism. Reminiscent of Dali. But it's much more abstracted. It's moving towards non-objective. Kinds of things. So I was. Curious about you were saying the language based AI, or it may be a text base. AI. I was wondering if you could show one of your. One of the images you just showed your favorite. And maybe share with us. The words you used. To arrive at that image.

Yeah, sure. So. Let me. Bring that back up. And. Let me go to this one. This one's got a long title. So this one. This one. Is the text that was used for this. Was. The emptied. Soul. By. The. Minds. Meaning. In the deep midnight of despair. Now. I cannot. Say. That the AI used every single. Word. To generate this. But what I have found is. That even simple changes in word phraseology. Can give you radically different.

Michael Pierre Price

Images. So. Word choice does matter. And. Because. The AI. And I know you. Victor, when you had your discussion with Pat. With Patrick lit key. Patrick was talking about the generative adversarial networks. Which is, this is the same type of approach. But using language to, to help with the input. Is that. That's what you're saying. The idea is that you. You basically have. Static to begin with. And then. The text.

Michael Pierre Price

Has illusions to imagery. That's tied to. A database where the words are kept. And then. This adversarial network. Then combats. In a program. Programmatic standpoint or sensibility. To then help to finally start. To create the imagery from there. And for me. It's kind of a starting point that I then take and advance further from there. But for me. What I. What I really. Like I said. What I'm really, really trying to.

Michael Pierre Price

Try to achieve. Is a visual language that is. Somewhat surreal and somewhat abstract and hopefully live in. A space. In between that can, I'm hoping, achieve some sense of what it is I'm inputting as my concepts. Easier said than done, but it's fun. The mad scientist in me is enjoying this very much. So great,

Great.

I hope that explained it a little bit.

Oh, yes, yeah, it did. It was really cool. Thanks for walking us through that.

Thanks, Victor. Yeah. All right, good. A few more hands raised. Yay. Jan, looks like I had you up first, so I'll let you go first. And then Zahar is afterwards.

Yeah, it just seemed like a good thing to jump on some of your concepts that you're talking about, Michael. Because I'm coming at it from a slightly different angle. I'm just going to share one piece with you guys that is in progress. Let me just make sure I've got this. Bear with me.

Sure.

Have it up. So before I play this, as a lot of you know, I'm taking language from audio, words in particular, and adapting them or translating them into these waveforms through various apps in a sort of complicated process. And one of the things that I'm trying to work out is how to, for animation, animations like this is how do you adapt the word and change it to make it more interesting audio? This one's not quite there, but I'll give you a view of it and we'll see where that's going.

…

.

…

I'm like, wow.

Speaking of adaptation, I need a less sensitive mouse. Okay, exit screen share. Stop share. And, yeah, I mean, it's playing around with, again, the theme of language and language's place and then translating. It's like what we were talking about before, the simple forms sort of becoming something complex. And one of the interesting things about that, the process is it's, you know, going from audio to visual to sometimes moving image and then possibly back to audio again. And one of the fascinating things is during this process, some of the waveforms.

Jan Swinburne

Kind of take on the qualities of, you know, subjectively of the word. One of the word, that particular form was the word time from my voice. And then the soundtrack is what I created just playing around with the recording of my voice saying time over and over in an audio app and trying to get something different. Going. I'm not happy with it so far. I think there's, it could do more. It does subtle things. I'm not sure that the music is right for that particular piece.

Jan Swinburne

Music, sound. But, yeah, in the discussion of adaptation, it's super interesting. One, to be inputting language in the manner, Michael, that you're inputting it in. And then I'm sort of. Yeah.! I'm doing a sort of other end of it, like taking audio and messing with it and trying to make these images.

Jan Swinburne

But I'm also interested in how we adapt. Like, I have a significant tremor. So, like, I don't. Technology has helped me out with being able to move on and still create where, you know, traditional methods. Like, I can still do a lot of them. But as I was saying before, photography without a tripod.

Jan Swinburne

And mind you, image stabilization is getting better and better. You know, instead of jerking up and down, I get, you know, a nice sort of wave happening. Which you can exploit these things as well. So that's my two cents.

That's really cool. So it's. Jen, I mean, it's so interesting because. I mean, traditional societies saw that the. I mean, you take a look at the Bible. I mean, you look at the sense that something isn't real till it's spoken. And that you, you know, you speak the word and it becomes real. It's manifest. Yeah. So that's. I find that. That's a whole concept. Really fascinating. Yeah. Connecting. My other question for you is. I know you've concentrated primarily like on a single word.

Michael Pierre Price

Is that limitations on hardware or is that just a focus of your artistry to like focus on a single word, a single concept versus like, say, a sentence or a phrase.

It's interesting. Thank you for asking that. I'm currently I'm struggling with writing out some of the philosophy behind this. And one of them is that idea that, you know, to speak is to create. And also the fact that they send up in these sort of geomorphic forms and the relationship between language and land is something I find really fascinating because it's mutually influential as the territories we live in. And now I'm rambling. I forgot. Oh, yes. Yes. Sentences as opposed to single words.

Jan Swinburne

I'd like to explore that. One of my concerns in the process is that it'll just. It won't be defined enough visually for me. The other issue. That's the main issue, I think. But one of the things that I think is really interesting. And one of the things I hope to do is because I do have an interest in music as well as something coral with all the words like the list of words I've used so far is kind of short. There's many variations of time. So there's time desire. There's two variations of love.

Jan Swinburne

Crazy and psycho. And throwing throwing like doing something sort of modernist. With the language and a coral thing is like rearranging those words and getting a sentence and something that is. Acoustically pleasing or challenging. Would be. I'm hoping to get there at some point, but this is like huge project wise. Yeah. Thanks for asking.

All right. Have you ever encountered the work of Julian James?

The name sounds familiar. Yeah.

So he wrote a book like in the late 60s, early 70s that dealt quite a bit with the power of the spoken word and really in relationship to the rhyme and meter of poetic speech. Cool. In ancient times. And I'll put information about it in the chat, but it's really a fascinating book.

Yeah. Thanks.

So many cultural instances. Yeah.

And one of the things this is interesting for me too is just how art has moved through language to, you know, there's sort of language based artists like Jenny Holzer and that struggle that's been there is visualizing language or language is now visualizing through AI and through a process like mine. Which I find really fascinating because we may not have been able to do that in the early 60s. And I think as visual artists, we make pictures because words often are inadequate. And we write a lot about them and we talk a lot about them.

Jan Swinburne

So, anyways.

Okay. Next up. Zuhair.

Hello. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. Honestly, I'm not prepared. I've been wanting to come to the salon for so many weeks. I just prepared myself for the next few weeks. I'm going to start with something that is from my most recent project.

Okay.

Which is part of my NFT residency with a website that is voice.com. I got to say, I'm trying to move between mediums since I started with art. I guess I started with, I don't remember which year, but it was since the one megapixel camera. When I got one, it just blew my mind. And I loved also analog photography. And I would experiment and try to disassemble it and ruin the signal. And I love the glitch that will happen whether in video even and on digital mediums.

Unattributed

And my most recent project is because I applied to a residency, which is something that I've done before, but not in terms of NFT or the blockchain or anything like that. And I used sort of, you know, you, Michael, inspired me to actually talk today because I'm using Midjourney, which is a prompt-based artificial intelligence that basically I send a sentence and it sends back to me. But when you sort of lose control or anything like that. There are four iterations that are visual. But I tried to get out of the medium because I'm trying to always experiment with mediums like I haven't stuck to any medium yet. And since we're talking just about adaptation, I'd like to say something about that. I started documentary filmmaking.

Unattributed

Working as a filmmaker but also experimenting with sound design. Creating music. Even though I'm not a musician. I don't know how to play any instrument, but I always like to experiment and try things audio visually, no matter what they are. And having to be displaced from my country since 2017, I had to move to digital mediums. It was a necessity and that's the adaptive part. I'd like to share my screen and I'm not sure if sound will be heard, but still, you know, we can see the image. Okay. All right. Thank you.

If you select computer audio, Zuhair, when you share, look at the bottom left for two check boxes, just computer audio and another one that'll help with the audio.

So I'm on iPad. I'm not sure how that translates. Maybe for next time. That's why I'm not prepared. Maybe for next time I'm going to figure it out. Can you see my screen though? Not yet. Okay. Just a second.

Thank you for your patience.

I think you can see it now. Yes. So these are my most recent works with my journey. But you know, I'm just experimenting here. The thing is, I don't like doing static images with it because that's how, what we're seeing so much, even though it does satisfy some sort of like thirst towards creating images with it that are almost photographical.

Unattributed

And I'd like to share this, these works. So you can't hear sound, right? Yes. It's not as if you're being from the kids. So just to make sure we're able to hear sound. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, wow. That's awesome. I'm going to play the second one then. It's also one minute. It has resisted the salt sand For a long time it has been fighting against the evil faces So it must leave the sun's shadow I'm not sure whether to play another one. Or should I stop? Because I don't want to take too much time.

No, go ahead.

So what do you think?

No, please feel free.

All right. They're all one minute, so it's not going to take too much. All right.

All right. One more. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Those are beautiful and powerful.

Really powerful. Yeah. Beautiful work.

Thank you, really. The story behind them, the name of their collection, they're made out of eight audiovisual pieces. And the name is Diasporic Daymares, diaspora coming from immigration and daymares as a nightmare that you might experience during the day. And the story behind it is I actually collaborated with a member from my family. So my parents, my siblings, a cat, a virtual human, and my wife.

Unattributed

So basically, I'm now based in Colombia, and I come from Lebanon. And in August 2020, there was a huge explosion at the Cabaret City. And I was in the streets cleaning up, trying to help people as much as I can. And the only thing that I was able to do to help out really take someone in was actually to take an animal in. Because so many pets don't stay home. So one of the pieces, like the last one, is actually a depiction of a cat's nightmare. Because when I had the cat, it would actually have nightmares. And that's why I used AI, because I could just go all the way with imagination. That's the, you know, the economy of ideas, whatever you want to call it. And the rest is poetry made by my father, recited by my father and mother for the first two videos. So it's a very personal project that I tried to do as a foundational one.

Unattributed

And I'm using NFTs. For one main reason is to, because of the financial situation, to try to rise above it, to leverage this technology and art to actually help out my family. That's why I went with NFTs, because I don't want to have third parties as much as I can, even though it is part of a residency. But all they offered the support. And as I said, there are eight audiovisual pieces. I just showed you some of them. There's also fractal art. And there's also glitch art, because I met my wife online. And I've never saw her read. And I'm not sure if she's reading this really clearly because of the bad connection there. So I used the glitch art to reconstruct that.

Unattributed

I want to try to see if I do have it. Oh, no, it's not here. That's too bad. But, yeah, I'd like to maybe show it later on. And, yeah, if we communicate later on, I could send links. It's all online. And thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Yeah. You could feel the personal quality of all of it. So, yeah, it definitely comes through.

Well, that's wonderful to hear. Thank you.

Okay. So any other volunteers or anybody want to share anything more of artwork? Anyone? If not, we can open up for discussion either on the work that's been shown, ideas on adaptation, or anything else you all might want to talk about or share. We still have half an hour or so to go. So up to you all. This is our time here. So, yeah, Renata?

I'm seeing that a few of us have been using AI recently, and it's a very new situation. And I really wonder sometimes about the quality of the images is very poor in terms of resolution. So that's going to change, presumably. But for me, sometimes I just feel like I'm a cyborg. Because part of my mind is the machine doing it. And I always try to disguise it really heavily. I never want it to look like it was made by one of those engines. So I often I'll, like, glitch the image, and then I'll change the filter, and then I'll double, like, what's the word when you double exposure with another image?

Renata Janiszewska

And I'm not sure. I just keep working it and working it and working it. And also, I'm very, very specific when I don't like the color, for example, then I'll tell it what kind of color I want. And I keep changing as it goes along. So I just wanted to share that and ask if anybody has any sort of ethical issues with people using AI for

Us. You know what? Define. In other words, what do you think the, like, what sort of issues?

Well, I just feel like I don't want to give my workout without the look of me, of my hand on it.

Okay.

But I think, yeah.

Let me. This is a conversation. Actually, there's a guy who's been fairly well known in the AI range who I've known for decades, a guy named Casey Rees. And this is going to sound overblown, but he and I had this conversation, I think, 2018 or 2019. There was a summit in Dubai called Belief in AI that was put forth by the Dubai Future Foundation. And he was there. I was there. A couple of the guy at Serpentine was there. And so anyway, you know, basically, you know, kind of an early, early AI summit. And the one thing that I think he made was kind of like this.

Patrick Lichty

He made a really good argument in saying that, you know, painters, you know, there was a shock wave with painters when photography came. And, you know, I mean. And that led to Manet. You know, I mean, you know, we went from Tintorello to Manet. You know, so I mean, I think that these things change things. I think that there are actually I was in Mid Journey and what was it? One of the developers, Dan, was in Office Hours and it was interesting listening to him.

Patrick Lichty

And I'm actually doing an essay for one of the intellect publisher journals. And it's really it's just kind of really to me. I don't think this is about aesthetics. I think it's about writing. I think it's about concrete writing. You know, so the thing is, is that and then the other thing is concrete writing and then also the idea of concrete prose as code as well. And so the thing is, is that if we think about this as, you know, I agree with reason saying that, you know, this is sort of like the definition. This is a new apparatus, you know, or this is, you know, kind of a new sort of apparatus that creates images.

Patrick Lichty

But, you know, but the thing is, is to see that in that in and of itself, I think is kind of red herring. And so the thing is, is that these other aspects of the of the process here, I think you're going to wind up becoming more, more, more open. The one thing I'm a little bit worried about. Is. Kind of what happened back in 1990 when Aldous Pagemaker came out and basically, you know, a lot of graphic designers were put out of a job because, you know, my brother in law can do Pagemaker. And so the thing is, is that I think the one thing that's really important to think about.

Patrick Lichty

Is that these engines have an aesthetic, you know, they have they have an aesthetic. They have a they have they have biases. Actually, what was really interesting, we were talking with Dan at MidJourney about, you know, about the racial biases, you know, that the you know, that the data set has, you know, for this. In other words, if you say you cybernetic wizard, there's this old white guy, you know, and so it's just a matter of saying, OK, what are the most specific? You know, what are the aesthetics of these of these? Machines. They're kind of like mechanical Turks, right? In other words, it's the matter of how you use a camera as opposed to saying that I hit the shutter and the camera makes the image for me. And the thing is, is that it's the matter of the mastery of the apparatus.

Patrick Lichty

And I mean, I mean, let's put it this way. You know, there. There are. There's a there's a ton of people making selfies and, you know, and before there were a ton of people making, you know, pictures with the brownie camera and that sort of thing. I mean, you know, McLuhan tells us that, you know, when there's a new when there's a new technology, you know, it reshapes it reshapes the landscape, but it doesn't eliminate the things before them. So the thing is, is that. I think for a while we're going to wind up with this huge.

Patrick Lichty

Profusion of images. That are going to look. That are going to have the same sort of quality. It reminds me when Bryce was really prop popular. If anybody's that old, you know, remind it, you know, that Bryce, the ray trace landscape software from fractal design and that sort of thing. There were all these beautiful landscapes, all these beautiful ray trace landscapes. And the thing is, is that I think we're going through one of those periods and where we have, you know, one of these kind of like apparatus. Based.

Patrick Lichty

Aesthetics that's, you know, that's going to dominate for a little while. But then I think, I think it's going to pass and, you know, and I also think that artists. Real artists and excuse me for getting in as the real, who is a real artist. You know, those are the ones that get underneath the skin of the engine.

Patrick Lichty

Yeah. You know, those are the ones that really. You bend them to their will. So, I mean, I'm sorry for going on a bit, but. This is something I'm writing a journal article on and. You know, it's. I think. There are some artists who are just almost in despair, you know, with this stuff. And I think there are some artists who, you know, are really fascinated. I mean, myself, I just, I, you know, I, I just see it as an, as another.

Patrick Lichty

Major technological evolution. And, and the thing is, is that it'll. It'll be. It'll become less trendy. And, you know, people, some people wind up actually using these, you know, in, in some very interesting ways. And, but I think a lot of people are making endless. Animate anime girl warrior Mecca.

Patrick Lichty

Dragon tentacle things. That makes sense. But actually the thing is, is a lot of the work that I, I, I'm seeing here that, you know, that. You folks are doing with. But this, I mean, it's, it's, it's beautiful stuff, but the thing is, is that. How far does it diverge? From. What resonates with you?

Patrick Lichty

And I think that's. That's the question that I have with these things. And I think. Myself being a bit of a. Being a bit of a new champion and a data is in a flux of artists. You know that. You know, I. I like to, I like to throw spaghetti on the wall and take a, take a look at the pattern and say, oh, well, that's cool. But, you know, this idea of, you know, how, how. How tightly focuses your attention.

Patrick Lichty

Intention on, on these things. And. You know, I think. I mean, I think I'm going to probably make. A couple of series of 24. And then I'll probably just cancel my subscription. Unless, unless I see some really radical things happening with it. And, you know, I'll probably go back to my 3d scanning for a while.

It seems to me that, that a lot of this is simple. It's sort of similar to musical sampling. And. You know, it there's someone actually making the, the, the source material in this stuff there. And so you could say that this is a very, very simple piece of art. You could say that they're, they're actual. You know, you could say they're actual artists who are, who you're pulling.

Lee Day

Your source material from, and it feels to me like a lot of these pieces are dependent on. The, the database, the data that they're pulling stuff from, you know, they have a particular look. That is really driven by the material that, that it's. That it's you know, that it's sampling. And. You know, so I, I think the, the original artists are, are probably quite important in what the outcome, the of the, the algorithmic art is as well. But one difference that maybe with the music is that here you have an algorithm.

Lee Day

Which is the intermediary instead of a person who is in the music, who's doing the sampling. And you know that, that might be a little bit of a difference there. Yeah. I

Don't know. I don't know. Lee, whether there. There are artists because my sense of this is that it's actually combing the internet for images that match the words.

The, the, the work has particular looks to it though.

Well, that's only, no, it doesn't always. It depends.

Who's using it.

Yeah. Renata. I mean. Parameters, you know, that defines certain artists, you know what I mean?

Exactly. And, and that's the thing. A lot of, if you take a look at the, you know, the, the term is, you know, what are your prompts? You know, what are you prompting the AI to utilize? And there are a whole slew of artists that get referenced depending on the style of art that some people want. You know, if it's a sci-fi look and you want to do a complex, you know, sci-fi look. You know, if it's a sci-fi floating platform or something, you know, here's the artist for that, or, or this artist, or that artist. And so I, I mean, I think what Patrick was saying, and again, what Lee was saying as well is this is, this is potentially it. There is, there is a similarity to photography in, in some regards.

Michael Pierre Price

Obviously, and I, and I think that whenever you have a new technology that can be rather all encompassing, most people will gravitate to the simplest way of using the application. If, if they could find, oh, look, I can, I can create, you know, this kind of artwork or that kind of artwork with, with, you know, just add water. And stir, and there you go. But I think what Patrick was saying is that the, you know, the real artists, the, those that see this as a tool, there, there's an evolutionary aspect to this.

Michael Pierre Price

And, and for me, all I can say is kind of what I'm doing is I'm, I don't care about replicating another artist, because that's not, you know, that's not where my interest is. My interest is in language. To see if I could, like I said, to, to develop my own sort of visual language. But I, but there are, there's, there's limitations right now to that. And for me, the limitation on the size of the work for me is frustrating to some degree. I could still create, you know, fairly sizable pieces. But as you and I were talking about just a few days ago, Renata, the fact that for the most part, I'm still limited to, you know, the size of the work. I'm still limited to a million and a half pixels is a very small sampling. If I want to create something larger that could see in between the pixels that are not in that original size.

Michael Pierre Price

The best I can do is up sample, but up sampling is an adding new data. It's, it's just sort of helping the massage what's in between the smaller sample into making something that looks decent at a larger size. And, and so for me, having those extra millions and millions of pixels to create really interesting works that have more dynamic range to it is where my interest lies.

Michael Pierre Price

And also, because I hate being limited by what the original programming was I'm, you know, trying to find some programmers like and work with that might be able to help do things. And, and, and also look at what those samples are. Because to me that's a big, that's a big factor in all this as well.

You know, in, in two years once they've sucked up all the all the experience of people putting all this information in there they're going to sell you that so don't worry, it'll be there.

I still, I still maintain that it's coming straight from the internet because then Spalter gave a talk. About a month ago. And she's stated that she was just asking for airplane images and that she liked the compositions that the AI engine gave her and I have a big problem with the compositions. But what I'm doing that's interesting for me right now is creating a mood, based on the art of the past, and other art forms of the present so for example I'll put in Max Ernst. So, Hadid who's an architect. Wes Anderson who's a film director, and see what kind of mood or feeling, it can conjure up, and I'm, I'm always changing. And I'm really trying to bring the art of the past in.

I think of it as an instrument. Like a musical instrument, how do you play it. You know, in other words, it. A musical instrument has a certain. A certain tone and has a certain quality. Yeah, I mean say like a guitar you can put you can put guitar pedals on it you can do all these different things to change the thing but nevertheless you know there's. It has six strings and has frets you know it has a certain way that you manipulate that you manipulate, you know the apparatus.

Patrick Lichty

Once again, you know, and that sort of thing. And then the thing is that, I mean, it is it isn't it isn't like there aren't different artists like Django Reinhardt and Eddie Van Halen and all that kind of stuff. They're totally different. But they're both playing guitars. You know, and I think this might be where we're at, you know, we might wind up, we might wind up with, you know, with, you know, people who are really good at playing these instruments.

And, and finding out what you want to say to I mean the technology. Hopefully assist you in that. You know I also wonder about how. How is changing us to like the, you know, we're working with it all the time and you can see the influence of it on us. I think, you know what gets produced. The choices you make.

I mean I'm, I'm halfway thinking of taking some of these images and images and taking them back to the pen plotter. You know, I mean, you know, I'm in other words there's a there's a part of me that does not want to be satisfied with these images in and of themselves.

Yeah. Well, one of the things that, you know, in working with the CNC machine I leave tool marks but I carve it as well it's like, because on its own. It's too sterile. Yeah. That was one of the issues with, you know, translating the. Yeah. The digital. And then trying to bring the hand back into it.

I think we're still at a point where I just. Just getting used to these things and.

Breaking up. You're breaking up, you're breaking up.

This, you know, some of these things that are just spitting out source material, and then I think, I think we're going to get to the point where we're going to start looking at. As. Course material for other work. For other works.

You know, I have. Just.

Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I had a question. You know, I haven't had a chance to actually work with any of these AI. You know, apparatus, as you say. And I think something that you did, Patrick, where you. Created imagery. And you fed your own imagery. Into the algorithm. And I thought that was a good gambit for creating your own signature using the tool. But your own style could. Could emerge. That's just intuitive really. Is that, is there one. Program that lends itself to putting your own images in rather than feeding off a database. Sure.

I mean, there's a, I mean, night. I was using night cafe that does that quite well, but. The one thing that I. I was in office hours at, at mid journey today. And you know, and the one, and I'm, and I also actually have a couple other tools. Like I have an Excel based. Prompt maker. In other words that, you know, you, you type in things or you see as numbers of dropdowns and it. Makes all these parameters for you. I've been getting these tools that make, make prompts. And. I think it's really super interesting. And the, the, the, the, the thing is, is.

Patrick Lichty

If you look at this tool. Dan at. Mid journey was saying. The one thing that he is really surprised that people are not using our image prompts. In other words, you can start from a source image and most people don't. And it's he says, apparently there's a lot of, there's a lot of folks that haven't gotten so far into the tool that they don't know that there's you can start with an image source and go from there yeah so

That's definitely that's definitely possible victor through a number of the tools that are out there and I definitely find using that and almost almost like an iterative process of creating something from an image of mine as an initial image get some get a number of images from that and then pick something there and then feed it back in again and do that you know any number of times so yeah and again but like what patrick was saying is that's really up to the artist to see that this is really just a tool that you're using and I think that's something that I've learned over the years is that you know if you're looking at the works of artists is that sense of creativity experimentation and yeah you have to spend a little time learning a new tool and you may just scratch the surface but I think as part of an artist's spirit it's like okay now what can I do now what can I do and then that's where you look under the hood a little bit more and see okay what's really going on here and how do I make this more interesting you know to match my aesthetic or where I want to go with things I

Mean I mean I mean in this day and age where you know the tools are so fluid and so many you know it's I'll I'm gonna I'm gonna take two points in time in like 1994 1995 I mean there was a regional art exhibition in northeast ohio that I got best in show for and the yeah and a couple of the other artists you know in the show basically you know it's oh let's have some coffee and they said can you tell us what program you use and I said well give me I'll tell you what program I use if you tell me what brushes and oil your oil paints you're using and this is what do you mean I just said I said I'll tell you straight out it's Photoshop you know and it says how did you get this I said I have my own I have my own nose it was it was in the late 90s but I said I have my own printer and I said I have my own printer and I said oh I have my own printer and I said oh I have my own printer and I said oh I have my own printer and you know I know how to use it and I know how to you know apply lacquer and I know how to do all these sorts of things and I said oh I thought you just you know took a photo on you hit a button and I just said well you know it isn't like that now the thing is that there are a lot of artists you know these days that personally I have trouble not being frustrated with a little bit who basically are relatively new they come in they've either learned cinema 4d or you know they're just saying hey look I just found this new app and I just hit a few new buttons and there's this cool stuff and I'm gonna go hang it off the blockchain and you know where there are those of us who have trained and practiced and all those sort of thing for like decades and I'm sorry it's a little irritating you know and you know but the thing is that you know I know that I know this happens but you know once again this goes back to my it goes back to my argument is that you know there's some people who punch buttons there are people who are quick talents there are people who you know have you know very refined sensibilities and have just worked their butts off for decades and you know there's a lot of room for everybody but the thing is that I think this is a challenging time in which we have a lot we have a lot of converging technologies right now and a lot of images and a lot of work coming out and the thing is it's a very noisy period right now I

Tend to think of it as a chess game I think of the computer and the programs as the opponent when I make a move then it makes a move there

You go I just wanted to mention me just wanted to mention that because we're not mentioning it but it's in the idea like a photograph even though the quality is still reduced like low but today two changes happened with like regulation the journey and a and so that has only 100 000 people and it's going to open in the upcoming weeks for millions of people and it's going to be open for commercial use because right now it does not and mid journey has actually changed the regulations as I learned from friends I didn't read it yet but I did read the dali one and someone told me I was shocked but I'm adjourning. They own every prompt you do and every image that you produce with it up until the point that it's not too edited or whatever. I think there's a percentage of post-processing that they consider that right now it is yours, but they still have the 20, 30%, 10% that you used it for.

Unattributed

And I don't want to be too intrusive, but I can share my screen in just a second. I have four images that just look really hyper-realistic if you want to take a look at them. If not, I'm just happy for you. Okay. All right.

And then Crayon as well.

It's a really good imitator. It's crazy.

Yeah. I've been doing a lot of absurdism myself, actually.

So that's one of them. That's Dali. Dali Mini 2. When you see this at the bottom right, that's Dali, these colors.

Yeah. Dali 2.

That's Dali. Yeah, Dali 2.

Okay. I don't have access to that. I've only been able to find Dali Mini. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the way it is. They're really different. They're really different. Yeah. But they're going to open for millions soon. So I think within this month, we're all going to be able to use it. These are just examples. I do have like hundreds, not hundreds, probably 60 more. And it's going to be a payment-based. Right now it's for free. And they open just to a selected few. I don't know what basis they use for that. But I did apply twice. I think that helps.

Unattributed

So, yeah, I have things that are just, they're going to blow your guys' mind. And I think the debate would have changed if you took a look at them. But yeah, I'm still, I don't have an opinion yet. I'm too young for that. I didn't have one. Yeah.

At the end of the day, there's that classic essay, you know, from the early 20th century, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin and that sort of thing. And I think we're, I think, I think we're looping, we're looping around that again. But the thing is, is now we're going from out of, from painting to photography. Now we're going from photography to, you know, to algorithmic imaging, you know, and it's, and the thing is, is that, you know, I think the funny thing is, is that, you know, Benjamin was talking about getting, you know, the loss of the aura, the loss of the value of the piece, you know, through reproduction.

Patrick Lichty

And, you know, I think, I think that we are scrambling to try to keep that valuation through the NFT. You know, somehow, you know, it was like trying to capture the aura of the digital image through the NFT. And, you know, which I think is a really interesting thing. But, you know, these, these, these engines are really interesting, but I have a strange, I have a strange possible prediction that this may, this may create a resurgence, you know, in traditional painting in the fine art market. In other words, saying is okay, great. We have all this stuff. That's fine. You know, then, but the thing is, is that what we want is that we want something with a sense of realness, materiality, and that's where thing, which was our last talk, you know, and it's just sort of like saying, you know, it's like, I can, I can punch buttons all I want, or I can find parameters all I want.

Patrick Lichty

And that's where the thing gets something and print it out. And yeah, that's great. But, you know, you know, I think that too, and I hate to use this word, but I'm starting to get kind of like art worldly, but, you know, to a connoisseur, there's going to be something that they're going to want to be able to hook onto the sensibility of a human being, you know, and I don't know, you know, because, you know, with the whole post internet thing, there was a, there was this, I'm sorry. I'm very passionate about this moment. Moment in time. It's just because I think it's really interesting. And I, I find, I also find it a little bit threatening. I mean, for the 50th anniversary of art form, there was an article by Claire Bishop called the digital divide. And that was in 2006, 2007. And she was basically saying, let's just chuck all this digital stuff out of the art world because of the fact that it doesn't have a materiality.

Patrick Lichty

It's, you know, it's there's, there's no virtuosity to it. There's, you know, all these sorts of things. And this gave rise to the entire post internet movement. Now, the thing is, I think that we could possibly be at a, at a, at a, at a, at another critical point, you know, that, you know, with this stuff saying, okay, there's, there's something about the quality of these, these engines that, you know, and their ease of creation of, of images and that sort of thing that, that, calls for a gesture of some sort, at, at, at the cultural level.

It's, it's an interesting circular thing with AI. I haven't used it at all, but it's, it's everything we've input. So it's like coming from humans and then it's being altered and adapted and changed and sort of fed back. So I find that really interesting.

But the one thing, the one thing that, I, I spent some time with Steve DePaolo over at Simon Fraser over in Vancouver. And, you know, he hit that if you haven't checked his workout, yeah, I mean, he's doing, you know, machine learning based stuff and he's got these modules, he chains together and that sort of thing. It, and his work is astounding. And the thing is what he's kind of telling me is like, you know, these image based, you know, engines, you know, that they're so bound to the initial conditions upon the, upon the initial image set. Yeah. You know, and this is one thing that I think is so important, you know, in other words, it's like these things are so, but it's sort of like how deep dream at first it was like all, all the dogs on, on Google search. So it's like the animation is like that, that Bob Ross thing, you know, it's like, it looks like, yo, there's all these puppies, you know?

Patrick Lichty

And, you know, I think it's a good metaphor actually.

All right. We're just about, out of time here. So is any, any last thoughts on this subject? Thanks for bringing it up or not. It's I, I think this is, this is a subject that has some legs to it. So we, we may continue on it at a future date with this as well. Cause I, I think it's an area a lot of us are interested in, and there's definitely some potential

Issues. How about a topic of the office? You know, in the

Making in the business. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that. So you're going to have to think about that.

Lee Musgrave

More like a painting well the thing is still there and we're still there I still hear all of you saying you wish that your computer generated thing looked more like a painting well

You know this is this is mccluhan you know in other words it's like you know in mccluhan's if you're not into marshall mccluhan he had did this thing called the tetrad and it had four questions it's like what is it obsolescent what does it you know what does it bring back you know and so I mean and then I forget the other two but those are the things like you know what does it take away what does it bring back yeah

And

And the thing is that you know this is you know this is this is this is this is that right there and then really to me and I'm just going to say this very briefly is that originally when I had thought of adaptation is the fact that I was a computer engineer actually I was I was with tandy corporation I was in their qa thing and then I was a systems engineer for about five to seven years and I you know I've had images with my eyesight I mean I mean I've had issues with my eyesight all my life and so the thing is that you know I couldn't see the cert I couldn't see to work with the integrated circuits well enough and so you know I couldn't I became a graphic designer and artist and that sort of thing so the thing is that you know adaptation to one's situation is one of the reasons why I became an artist and I think that was really kind of more what I was getting at from my perspective and I think jan was kind of talking about that a little bit and but the one thing is that I think that you know kind of like doubling the metaphor the idea of taking one's regime of personal circumstances you know and then adapting it you know once you've decided to be an artist or designer or whatever you want to call yourself to you know to that to that situation and then you know when you wind up you know in what I'd call media like this then you know how do you then take your personal situation and adapt to the situation and then you know how do you then take your personal situation and adapt to it as you know you're in a highly highly and I use this word kind of provocatively a highly fungible situation while people are trying to make things non-fungible

Okay so on that note I am going to end our recording and thank everybody for sharing today and we'll continue the discussion off off camera as it is and thanks everybody thank you for asking thanks so much michael

You