Salon 51 // AI Engines: Friend or Foe?

Colin Goldberg, AI Engines Friend or Foe, Hello, my name is Colin Goldberg and welcome to the Techspressionist Salon. This is salon number 51 and the topic tonight is AI engines friend or foe. And this is a topic that was proposed by Renata Janiszewska, who is going to be our moderator for this session. So I'm going to hand the mic over to Renata.

Thank you, Colin. Hello, everybody. This is a topic that has a lot of controversy swirling around it. And the one thing that I wanted to make clear was when I said friend or foe, the word foe is not necessarily a negative word. It's this formidable adversary might be a good substitute for that. Or even a worthy opponent is another word that would fit.

Renata Janiszewska

I've so far I've seen that we have music AIs, text AIs, and now we have, well, sorry, we've had for a while text image AIs. And we're going to be talking about those with AI. So we have eight artists who are going to give us a short presentation. And I'll be reminding you at the five minute mark. So without any more delay, I would like to introduce the first artist presenting, Cynthia DiDonato.

Hi, everyone. I'm thrilled to be here and I'll start sharing my screen.

Okay.

So I'll start sharing my screen. Let's see. Can you all see my screen?

Yes.

Great. Okay. I'll get started. Obviously, you see the topic here and I'm going to move right on. Bear with me. I have a couple of text things to read, but I think they're important. We always are thinking about what art is and there's no universal definition. But the general consensus is, particularly with the visuals, that art is a conscious creation of something beautiful or meaningful using skill and imagination. But now we have another feature that's entered into the art world. And I'll put quotes around that depending on how you feel about it. There are art engines and apps. And as you can see here, there are four that I've listed. These are the four that I've played around with. And for those who are here and don't know what AI art refers to, it's art generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence that uses either text prompts and visual cues.

Allen Hirsh

And or images to generate art. On the pro side, I did a little research. And I read an article by Ralph Miliaguer. AI art is challenging the boundaries of curation. He mentions in particular that AI art is a multifaceted notion of curation. And it continues to blur the line between curation and creation. He goes on to say, photographers and AI artists have had to deal with an abundance of digital art. And they're all part of the artistic process.

Allen Hirsh

He says also that the artist's intention and artist's sensibility may be expressed in the very act of promoting specific outputs to the status of artworks. He also says it's more akin to a new kind of creative skill. AI researchers even talk about prompt engineering. To describe the process of crafting digital objects. AI engineers believe AI artists use shapes of keinia or presup ala can communicate through shapes of artefacts and adjusted props and animations to obtain desired results. Results. On the con side, I read an article in Wired by Scott. Oh, no, it's not Wired. The other fellow was Wired.

Allen Hirsh

Chambers, the article is in Towards Data Science, that particular website, and he feels that AI agents are not artists. And he goes on to say, artificial art lacks own intrinsic psychic meaning to the agent. AI agents are not creating art, rather they are replicating art. For example, he says the CAN agents, which are creative adversarial networks, which he uses interchangeably with GANs, which are generative adversarial networks, were trained on tens of thousands of original artworks created by humans.

Allen Hirsh

He goes on to say it is not drawing upon its personal or collective experiences, neither conscious or unconscious. He concedes that upon inspection, many generated images are artistic and aesthetic, and the research is fascinating. But he questions, are CANs creating art? I will now go on to show you what I have done with the ARCAN. So I will begin with AI engines. First is Night Cafe. And as you can see here on the left, I have an original image that I started with, which is one of my water media paintings that I abandoned. I put it into Night Cafe and used the prompt Shapes at Sea, and this is what I got. Then I went over to Motion Leap, which is an app that does everything from animate, to filters, provides filters. And so I animated that piece.

Allen Hirsh

Again, I visited Night Cafe and this time I only used a text prompt, Psychedelic City, Times Square. I continue to evolve it in the image to the right with the same prompt. Then I changed the prompt of that image you saw in the last slide to 1880s Misty London Street, and I changed the prompt of that image you saw in the last slide to 1880s Misty London Street, and I chose the Post-apocalyptic Wonderland Creation Method.

Allen Hirsh

After I finished, I went into iColorama, which is another app I use quite frequently, and I blurred the whole thing. And then I added a textured layer in the end to bring me finally to this piece. There are apps for the iPhone and iPad. One is Neural Paint. The other is Wambo. I've tried both. There are apps for the iPhone and iPad. One is Neural Paint. The other is Wambo. I've tried both. I just put in buildings for the text prompt and I used it as a background in a piece that I created with a layer that I worked on in Procreate. And this, of course, is all my own work put on top of this image. And I made the image at the beginning of the war on in Ukraine.

Allen Hirsh

Then I went to mid journey and I went to use text for this. Let me go back. I'm in the wrong place. I put swirling galaxy in its and its black hole. And this is what I achieved. And then again, I took it into Procreate and I manipulated it and I was looking for titles. Keep doing that to myself. I was looking for titles and Tommy Mints and Colin came up with the two that are listed below. Thank you.

Allen Hirsh

Again, in mid journey, I put the text Crescent. Which is the first image and I got a lot of images with present. But I decided on this one. I decided then to go look for some of my art that I started and was not happy with. So this original painting in the middle I took into sorry I keep doing that.

You've got one minute left, please.

I want took it into digital manipulation. And then in the end I came up with a final work where I blended the middle. I manipulated original art with the AI from mid journey. I consider AI a friend. It can be used as a tool in the artistic process, much as a traditional collageist or a digital collageist may incorporate pieces that are created by others to create something new. For me, AI generations alone do not have enough of the artist's personal experiences and or hand present in its material. So I want to take this opportunity to share my experience with you.

Thank you very much, Cynthia. Our next speaker is David Cohen. Otherwise known as Doodle Slice.

Hi, everybody. Pardon me a moment while I bring up the chair here. So. Hopefully. Can you see AI engines friend or foe?

Mm hmm.

OK, great. Because I can't see it on my screen. So the process here for me began with just a lot of play which I think as an artist going back 30 some odd years. I've always been interested in letting the paint drip, letting the smudge happen, not try to hide the signs of human in the work. So weirdly with AI, I think, despite the fact that there's no human on the other side of the fence, I feel comfortable with the idea of these accidents. And that's, I guess, how I kind of look at it. I give it some words and it gives me happy accidents back.

David Cohen

But it's like eating at a buffet because there's nothing to keep you from coming back with your plate for more and more. And I'm sure all of you who've played with it have had one of those times where you're just like, well, let me just see one more generation, one more re-randomized. Let's see what happens next. So, you know, I end up with... I'm sort of this glut and folder full of images. So in an effort to kind of steer myself, I turned to some of my poetry.

David Cohen

And so I had written this poem about a squirrel and an encounter with a squirrel. And I said, let me see what the AI can bring me as an image. So what you see on the left is I was using Wombo Dream. I've used all of the ones Cynthia mentioned. And, you know, I've used... As well as Disco Diffusion.

David Cohen

And they all have their pros and cons. Dream seems, at least at this stage, to produce more murky images. It's harder to pull out something with a lot of crisp detail. But I don't mind that because I was really looking at it more for direction and inspiration. And so bringing that into my iPad, I began adding line.

David Cohen

Bringing out the character of the squirrel. Pulling it more in the cartoon style that if you've seen other of my work, it kind of fits in. To kind of create a mood that fit the poem. And continuing in that vein, this is another poem. So, again, on the left is what, after, you know, several iterations, I decided I liked the AI had given me. And basically the prompts, in this case, this was Dolly. I asked for a watercolor image. I had asked for it to be figures in silhouette, but it didn't seem to understand that concept.

David Cohen

And dancing in a field of clover, which in the body of the poem is a refrain about meeting in the clover. And will you dance with me tonight? And...... So it had a little bit of the playful, innocent feel that I wanted. But I wanted to take it a little darker. Bring that silhouette in. Bring a moon in.... So,...

David Cohen

Basically building on top of that gave me a nice foundation,... To add some more painterly elements as well as some linear work. And again, I feel that it complements the poem. So it was nice to have that, you know, guardrail, if you will, on the selection process.

David, you have one minute left, please.

Okay. Speeding up. The next piece here is more of a collage, piece. So I took several of my harvesting of these images and wanted to bring them together with some hand-drawn elements. This time with just a theme in mind.... Mindful at Magnolia is the name of the piece. And,... Use the combinations and trimming them, the magnolias out of the one image and bringing them into the collage. But doing the rest with handwork.

David Cohen

... And now I'm exploring, a little bit more of what I consider a true collaboration with the AI. And I've written some haiku. Singles. Sing sweet mountain bird. Fall silent with due respect. Breaks the day. Resume. And I just gave that haiku entire as a prompt. And this was one of several images that it generated. And I still played curator to bring out some more. Sing for thistle seeds. Wine sap hues. Warm burgundy. Mellow industry.

David Cohen

Vigilance brown thorn. Stand sharp brittle protector. Guard the withered rose. And I'm very interested in this dynamic of playing back and forth. So like Cynthia, I'm concluding friend or foe friend.... There's lots to play with here. And,... I look forward to exploring more.... You know, the pitfalls are time being sucked away and spending money on credits. But,... So it goes. But I appreciate your time and letting me share. Thank

You very much, David. Our next presenter is Diane.

Okay.... Just wanted to first say thank you. Let me start by saying that I'm not a techie.... I don't know what an algorithm is or how they work. So I'm just going to talk about my limited experience with two of the programs and whether I believe they're friends or foes. So let me get my screen sharing here. Okay.

Unattributed

So I'm going to start with the first one. Can everybody see the screen? Yes. All right. Great. Okay. So I was first introduced to Mid Journey by my friend and fellow tech specialist, Frederick Pons. And since a lot of my digital work revolves around visions of the future, I started by using prompts like alien planet with futuristic city. And I started using prompts like alien planet with futuristic city. Then I took these source images and augmented them in Photoshop. And some of the images coincided with what I expected to see. And others reminded me a lot of the old Omni magazine, the science fiction art.

Unattributed

And then one night while I was showing somebody how that text-to-image worked, I just put in Siberian tiger wearing a space helmet. And then my little... Cats for Peace series was born. I had been using that hashtag for a while. And Mid Journey helped me quickly create several images that I was able to print out. I made a little certificate with some text on how these cats were really cool. And I sold quite a few of them at the last local art show. So my funny little cat seemed to really find an audience. And then I took a... A page out of Colin's book. And I entered my last name. And then after I fixed some facial aberrations, because there's always a few, the result was quite good. And fit in nicely with the research I'm conducting into my family's immigration journey. So using photos of my parents, I'm able to, you know, tweak the AI's result and extrapolate what my grandparents look like when they first come to the United States.

Unattributed

And then I can now build my family tree. And then I got the invite for Dolly. And I found that it much more, I felt, drew from photographs than Mid Journey. And this is an image when I put in my last name, Marcella. And it pulled up the city of Marcella, Columbia, which is not really what I wanted. So I tried to augment it by putting in, adding the word teenage girl. And then it said that I violated their standards and it was going to block me if I didn't stop. So I think that was... I'm hoping they'll fix that.

Thank you. Thank you, Diane. Thank you. I was really touched by how you investigated or looked into your ancestry.

You know, it's something that we're kind of looking at. And I think that's a loss on it because there are there's nobody left to tell me. So I have to build it.

But thank you. The next presenter is Colin Goldberg.

Hey, you guys see my screen. Okay.

Yeah, cool.

So I thought. I would do a little demo. I was just really sort of experimenting, you know, with AI stuff with mid journey. And honestly, haven't gotten too deep into it. But I thought it might be interesting to do a little bit of an experiment. So as you know, the salon was going, I just put in expressionist salon to see what it would come up with. But I'd like to get some words, some prompt ideas from the audience. So we could sort of do a live exquisite corpse. Maybe if you want to just unmute if anyone has a word they'd like to suggest.

Flying carpet.

Flying carpet. All right. Anyone else? Turtle dreams.

Turtle dreams.

Okay. Let's try those two. So I'm in mid journey right now within discord. And I'm going to say. Okay. Flying carpet. Turtle dreams. And it's going to start rendering. And what it does is it gives four different options. And then you can choose if you want to upscale any of the four or create variations on any of the four. So this is just going to show people who aren't familiar. You know, with how this works.

Colin Goldberg

You know, sort of what, what the process is. And while it's rendering, I'll show you my first initial experiments. Just, I just put in my first prompt was Techspressionism. Cat ended up with this guy. And then one of my friends from, from college and from undergrad saw the post of that. And he thought, he said, can you do Techspressionist woman in a wine glass and Techspressionist. Emu versus Warthog, which were two strange drawings I did when I was in college that he has actually has. So I created AI versions of that. And then the next one I did was just, I put in my name, Colin Goldberg. This apparently is what the AI thinks I look like.

Colin Goldberg

And then this one was Jackson Pollock using a computer. And these are, you know, very basic prompts. A lot of, a lot of people who are sort of more into this specify all sorts of things like aspect ratio or different kinds of rendering engines. This is just what it came up with when I put in Techspressionism.

Colin Goldberg

And then Techspressionist. So I think sometimes, you know, it's interesting to see what single words might, might come up with, but you could see here. So this is what the output was for our experiment, flying carpet, turtle dreams. And then you can pick. One of these for mid journey to then create variations on. So if I select V4, it'll start working on creating variations of the fourth one. And again, you know, like for me, this is sort of more of a satisfaction of curiosity. I don't know that I would necessarily, I mean, it is definitely addictive to, to start doing this.

Colin Goldberg

Just to find out what, what, what happens essentially. But you know, I can't, I can't foresee it becoming incorporated to my own studio practice too deeply. It's just not, you know, it's more of a novelty for me than anything else, but I do think it is very interesting. And, you know, that's just me personally, as an artist, I think there's plenty of valid usages for it. And, and I did, you know, Take notice of an Spalter's recent collection of AI spaceships, which, you know, I thought was a very well executed drop and the results were pretty interesting.

Colin Goldberg

So yeah, that's, that's pretty much all I have to share with regards to this topic.

Thank you very much. Colin upscaling.

Sometimes makes it look a little bit more finished or rounded out.

Absolutely. I should have actually shown. So when you upscale, it'll give you just that one image, not the four quadrants and it'll take it and enlarge it. But I've definitely seen people put in prompts like 16 colon nine to do like a certain aspect ratio. Or unreal engine. I don't know if it actually uses specific rendering engines. If you, if you ask it to, but you know, there's all sorts of, you know, different, very specific prompts that I guess people use to control the output. I would say I'm at the hobbyist level.

So thanks. Thanks a lot. Now, Patrick Lichty has been doing a lot of different work with.

Yeah.

Let's see. Take it away, Patrick.

Yeah. Let's see here. Well, not just, not just mid journey. I've been working in generative generative and algorithmic art and that sort of thing since the mid nineties. And so I'm not going to do any talk about anything like fractals or ties power tools or anything like that from the nineties because that's just going on too long. But I've been very interested in algorithmic. Yeah. And I've been working on. You know, Expansions of work. This is a piece I called predator versus predator.

Patrick Lichty

And kind of dealing with the idea of robotic drawing robotic mark making and that sort of thing. And the idea that we, most of our machines are most of our machines and most of our pets are all from some sort of, you know, Marshall lineage. But about 2018. I, I have a, I have an iPad. And one thing I'm very interested in is like mind versus mind is generator and machine is generator.

Patrick Lichty

And, you know, a lot of this has to do with my fascination with automatism coming from the data's and surrealists. And my background is Japanese my second language and calligraphy training and that and so what I do is I just started every day started cranking through, you know, three or four calligraphy is every day in my life. And I'm like, And Spalter and Carla Gannis were doing a lot of work in Playform. So I knew of Mr.

Patrick Lichty

Algenal's work in Generator of Vengeance. So I gave him a call and I became one of the Playform people. And so I had about like three, four thousands of these pieces that I'd done. And I fed them into the engine and started coming up with these other pieces. In other words, trying to see whether I could find areas of commonality in my stuff.

Patrick Lichty

And started running generation... Work animating them and also done a lot of with nagin a lot of Persian carpets but going from this basically led me to my collaborations with nagin and Colin basically having to do with they have a they have a sketch completion piece kind of like that one of you know that the guy who does complete children's drawings as if they're paintings and so Playform has something like that and I was doing these sketches and ascribing a style to them and learning them and brought these to Colin's work and then also nagin and I did some textile work for a show in Iran and so this was my this was my piece in conversation with my dear nagin and so what this led to was taking these layerings of sketch completions with it was some of the calligraphic stuff in the middle and it's kind of like that maybe more layers and maybe more layers than this but that's your basic minimum so this led to something that's now in the Techspressionism nft collection expanding on this work and so that's basically one of my few nfts from these series but the thing is I always thinking about how this can be expanded into motion and gesture but at one point I really kind of started seeing the other engines like night cafe and this was in the Techspressionist show at Southampton and this was a poem that I did from nagin in our early days of our relationship and so I fed that in there over the mountain and of course it's very lovely it's very luminous and one representative but on

One hand I find

That night cafe in the day in many ways also did a number of animations based on photography that we did from 3D scans in a show we did in Cyprus over last December you know I kind of felt that a lot of night cafes used for me was a little narrow so one thing I've been interested in is using prompt-based engines as a kind of form of writing and poesis you know in other words to me it's kind of like not necessarily art but maybe concrete pros because

I'm very interested in concretism

So I've done mid journey stable diffusion mid journey I'm kind of interested in maybe doing disco diffusion because I've seen some interesting work that was over at that was highlighted by friends of mine who run a gallery in New York called postmasters and I thought that was kind of interesting so I was kind of looking at this idea of self of self-referential work kind of like computers dreaming of computers or if we're talking about Techspressionist in other words like the idea of what is the notion of the computer inside something that's talking about digital art so I was looking around for some things and these are a couple studies that I did but I started finding something that was very much in the expressionist range and what I wound up with was this site really tight set of prompts and really just tweaking little bits like color or size and colin was saying 16 9 probably looking for mine I almost always do my work in 16 9.

Patrick Lichty

And so to me I really don't look at this as art but the idea of concretizing some intent so I'm looking at this idea of maybe you know intent is medium so every once in a while going from series I've done four series of these with format and for different types of fabrication different types of execution and you know I'll just throw out a prompt and rewrite and so this led me to series three this is not the format that I was doing I was doing was it 48 by 12 4 to 1 and I'm actually thinking of getting one of those shot out at walgreens just to see what it looks like as a as a two by eight you know that we like we did at the weird media show so the thing is that you know just really working with the words just little bits I think this idea of playing with intention and that sort of thing is as kind of part of the medium you know the other thing I thought was really interesting is that the output really changed a lot when I went to different formats so this is the eight by six format that I wanted to use for some of my larger output like weavings and that and that I think this would really go well with and so I'm really fascinated with how when you change the format how things change so much and then saying whoa wait a second this is completely out of control and then you turn around and say okay guess what how do we wrestle this back into position and this is what I've been doing with this iterate adjust iterate adjust and that's kind of the thing there is it I've always been kind of a process based artist you know it's basically look at different frameworks and different brackets to work with and kind of then funneling my intention through those and I think this is what I'm doing with this is that in many ways it reminds me of a whole lot of different disruptive technologies like desktop publishing you know basically really disrupted you know my work in graphic design but you know basically I found that you know there's a lot of different ways that I can work with different you know there was a core core practice that still stayed there and I think that's the one thing that you know really doesn't shake me up too much with this because I find that after a while you know there's a style that the engine maintains that people kind of recognize and say oh that's from stable diffusion that's from mid journey that's from this and I think what I've been trying to do if you can kind of see I've been trying to do things that sort of break the engine's expectations and I'll kind of say this is in that yeah and then I'll just say some of this work that I've been doing as well for a friend of mine nathan schaefer who's in canada basically kind of like a climate fiction dirigible stories in the 22nd century I've been kind of exploring things with that dealing with steampunk cyberpunk and biomorphic shapes and so that led me to one of my favorite pieces so far in that route and I'm just going to put it out as a provocation and this is what I call the cybernetic cat tank which people tend to like and so in other words I like the idea of if you know what if we're going to have robot if we're going to have cybernetic robots going across the landscape you know I definitely would like to have them be biomorphic cat tanks and those things so anyway it's like so I'm glad that to present the work with my own exploration of this and with my dear nagin and with colin so thank you thank

You patrick I was chatting with patrick this week and one of the things I've noticed about the for example mid journey has a default to teal and orange very frequently and so I try to give it a lot of guidance when it comes to color and I do and I find with dolly then the colors are a lighter brighter cleaner but their resolution is poor and there's a lot of stuff going on that I think it's just the question you asked me was what is it we are trying to accomplish as artists and that is something that we can contemplate and that's with intent

You know shaping

So is susan here yes I'm great all right you're our next presenter susan

So there's a screen share still happening and I can't patrick's screen share is still there

Okay thanks

Okay

my experimentation I approached the sorry I approached AI as an experimental tool and I came to it with thinking I wanted to use my brain as an of what can I make this do and how can I use it in my art. So I initially fed in some prompts and just played with it. I was using Wombo. That's the only application I've used on my iPad.

Susan Detroy

And I decided to think about it as a way to possibly expand the series that I've been doing since 2016 about self-portraiture related to aging. So I fed in prompts such as, where are my ideas? Where are my ideas? And I started to think about it as a way to express my love for birds. And I did it multiple times until I found something that I liked. And then in this case, I lightened it up a bit and then started applying it with a self-portrait. So these are some of the pieces that I created.

Susan Detroy

And then I worked at some in Snapseed, I think this particular one. And I believe this is the last this is my final piece. Another time I prompted I think it was something like older woman as an animal. And I really liked this image. And I played with it quite a bit. To superimpose my own image into the animal. And I felt like my as though my goal was to meld and even more animalistic way like my face to become more of the animal, and then create another, and then the result would be a persona or an animal human being. So I created a number of these.

Susan Detroy

Those that's my picture I don't want that. But, so, and I'd forgotten about one other that I just remembered this morning, as people were talking that I. This was another prompt that had to do with aging. And I. This one. This is where I ended up with it I couldn't. I don't have. I don't have memory where all the access, all the in between pieces are. But basically, my goal.

Susan Detroy

I do think of it as I think of it as a tool. Another way for me to create art. That is part of a bigger plan of bigger, the bigger project. And most, and I used. And most, and I used. I was using Diana as a blending tool. And in this one that I'm showing right now, I also use procreate. I think it has a lot of potential.

Susan Detroy

Actually, I'm using, as you can see black and white photos of myself. And where am I. Let me get back into the zoom. Stop sharing. That's my experience. Okay. That's my experimentation. And if I were to say what I'm going to do is continue experimenting. I think of it as a tool. That's it. Thanks.

Thank you very much, Susan. Up next is Mr. Price. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, Renata. Thank you. Wow. So, I've kind of indicated in a several previous ones that I've been really thinking about the text image AI for me as a tool to help me come up with some sense of a new type of visual language. And so, at this point in time, I'm squarely in the camp of AI as foe. And I don't see that as a negative as, as you said, Renata. But I see it as a worthy adversary that I need to I most of the last six months I've been experimenting. I haven't tried creating any final imagery yet as opposed to a number of the artists here today.

Michael Pierre Price

And I really feel that there's a lot, there's a lot that we don't know. The opacity of these engines to me is a double-edged sword. And for me, I don't, I feel unsettled using somebody else's technology that I don't get a chance to really look under the hood a lot at. So for that reason, I have really not played around very much with Dali 2 or with Mid Journey, even though I have experimented with them. I don't like the opacity of, you know, the of either of the engines right now because I don't feel like I have much in the way of control and understanding what they're doing. And to prove my point, let me share my screen here.

Michael Pierre Price

I don't know if you can see, but in, in Dali, or I should say in, in Mid Journey, I typed in a prompt that said Native Americans in outer space. And lo and behold, here, here's what Native Americans are shown as. So, you know, like if you were to type in Europeans in outer space, I doubt you would find something from the colonial period.

Michael Pierre Price

And so this, this is, this is the dilemma I have as somebody who's part Native. Here, here's another prompt, you know, here's another image. Looks like some, some space suited person with regalia on. And then the third one, which I found really troubling, were a number of people on a barren landscape.

Michael Pierre Price

So my only point to this is, when I don't know what the assumptions are being made in terms of how different images are, as part of this network of AI, it is something I try looking under the hood as best as I can, even though it's very opaque. And so I try things out, I test things out just to see what are the assumptions being made. And so this is just a cautionary tale for me to everybody else. But what I've been really fascinated with the AI, for me personally, is not necessarily very concrete things, but very esoteric, ethereal kinds of things. And so for me, on a highly personal level, since I was about seven or eight years old, I've had periodic dreams throughout my life that I call the dark man dreams. And they're very, very powerful dreams, where this foreboding entity or essence challenges me and sometimes scares me to, you know, coming awake.

Michael Pierre Price

And other times I get in very difficult situations in my dreams. And it's been a learning experience what these dreams have meant for me. But these have happened throughout my life. And so I spent the last six months playing around with the AI, to see whether or not I could try to show visibly what some of these things mean to me. So I started off, these were all created with disco diffusion, because for me, I like it right now because it gives me a lot of variables to play with. And I can look under the hood a lot much more transparently, even though there's still a lot of opacity that I'm hoping to, you know, I'm hoping to get out of the way. But I'm hoping to get around in the months ahead.

Michael Pierre Price

So this, what I wanted to start with was just kind of a big cinematic feel to the dreams that I've had. And so these first images kind of show that off. And the image, the big head in the top right is kind of the dark man element to this whole thing. The dark man concept for me is not an individual that I face off against, but this presence that's the entirety of the dream. It's like I'm captured by this.

Michael Pierre Price

And then from there, I wanted to create some situational type imagery, where the feeling of being continually drawn into the dream space, and so I played around with the imagery to try to get that sense of the foreboding, that sense of there was something ominous around. And again, in the sort of the left center part, the feeling of the dark man is there. And then the next series that I wanted to do was just the atmospheric quality of my dreams. And so that's what I went for in here. Trying to learn how I could bring these types of visuals to be.

Michael Pierre Price

And for me, the qualities of dreams are not concrete. At least my dreams are not concrete. Every time I think I kind of get a handle on something, it changes. And I can't speak for anybody else's dreams, but in these dark man dreams, they're very lucid, but they're very fluid. And I think that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to make it fluid and watery. And when I think I'm onto something, all of a sudden it changes into something else. And that fluidity is not something easily expressed in artwork. And I'm trying to figure out if the AI can help me with this.

Michael Pierre Price

And then I wanted to express the multi points of view, almost like my own type of surrealist, cubist version of multiple perspectives in one image. So some of these have that. Then I really wanted to do something that felt classic, my version of a classic sort of cubist graphic novel, where this is more cerebral in my looking back at kind of how I felt. So I'm not in the dream, but I'm thinking about what the dreams mean to me. So these images are sort of my cognitive essence of those. And then I went much more classic cubist looking in some of these here. And then the last couple images, I wanted to see if I could bridge the gap, if I could create something visually that had kind of the 3D depth, but also a bit of the cubist feel at the same time. These images that I'm showing right now, if I can pull them off and if I can create them, I want these to be very large images, like 40 by 60 inches or larger.

Michael Pierre Price

I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that because these are still fairly small in size to begin with overall. But that's what I've been playing around with here. And then these are the very final ones. So there you

Go. Thank you, Michael. One thing that I'm always really impressed by is how much you can cram into a very small canvas. Michael and I have had numerous discussions about the limitations of these engines in terms of how they work. And I think that's one of the things that I've been really impressed by is how much of a part of the resolution that they can achieve at the moment. Yeah. Before we open up to discussion, Vernada was going to go next.

I think you're muted.

This is truly fascinating, and I'm glad that I decided to attend this session. I am not exceedingly familiar with AI in the creation of digital fine art. And I sort of stumbled into it today while working with my iPhone. And I came across this app that I didn't even remember that I had downloaded called Night Cafe. And I said, well, you know, let me check out this word prompt to this. And I said, well, I don't know how to image mechanism here because I have an extensive background as a poet since the 1970s.

Verneda Lights

So I typed in single prompt, my sacred Chinese muse and came up with this. And I said, well, that's not bad. That's, you know, the Chinese field is consistent. The imagery is something I can identify as being, you know, Chinese. And I am aware that, you know, artificial intelligence in general has a problem in that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. So if you get a software developer who has intrinsic bias, that intrinsic bias is then transmitted to whatever it is that they create. And AI is not. And AI is known to have problems with the faces of women and also and possibly especially people of color. Okay. Really feels badly in that regard. And algorithms based on assumptions about color, which are deleterious, have proven to be very dangerous.

Verneda Lights

And feeding, you know, black people into the carceral system here in the United States. And other problems, even spilling over into healthcare and feeding negative outcomes for cancer therapies and kidney failure. Things as basic as that. So it's important that the AI be able to think broadly about all citizens of the planet and not just be locked into this Eurocentric colonialist mindset, you know. So I decided to. Test out what Night Cafe would do with women's faces and black people's faces to see if it could create from word prompts in a manner that I find likeable.

Verneda Lights

So I then went to this. I'm a skip over this for right now. And I put in the prompt beautiful queen. And I got this distorted. European but distorted face. Okay. And then I went back. And I said, well, let me see if I can get a female face. That relates to the my Chinese. News prompt. And I couldn't get it.

Verneda Lights

I wound up with, you know, stuff that was really, you know, kind of messy. Like this, for instance. You know. And so I went back to this. The male figure. And I reworked him. And after I did that, then it gave me. A female face. And I'm like, you know, okay, who is this? The Adam and Eve situation. You know, all over again, you create the man first and use him in order to get a decent female face. I don't know. But I intend to explore this further.

Verneda Lights

And so I said, well, let's see what happens with black people. So I said, you know, I put in the prompt a beautiful African queen. And I got this. Okay. That's their idea of a beautiful African face. All right. And then I said, well, let me try something that maybe. The AI engines can relate to from the news. And I did. Black lives matter.

Verneda Lights

And came up with this. You know, and notable here. Is the. Absence of kinky hair. Of course, you know, black people were known for kinky hair. You know, tight coils. And here the hair is straight. You know, and then here we had the European. Image here. Exactly what it is. I don't know. And the reflections of what could be. Ambulance traffic.

Verneda Lights

Police. Hints of flashing lights and. And danger, but to. Basically present this. As to me is garbage. It looks like garbage. You know, human garbage. And. I have a problem with that. Very definitely. And I think that. For those of us who work in digital media. People who create these programs need to be approached. About how they're doing. I mean, I agree with Michael. There's a level of opacity going on here. And.

Verneda Lights

This agenda. It is Euro centric. Debt. It's going to be like the room of art. You know, there's going to be a lot of. You know, Denigrating type. World view when you. Seek to express. Art about cultures outside of that European framework. The. AI not only fails in this limited for Ray. For me, not only fails. But it sabotages the desire to create art and I find that problematic indeed.

Verneda Lights

So I had another image here if I pull it up but I didn't put it in the folder but I had one for Black is Beautiful and I got a very mammy-ish step and fetch it type of caricature. So we have our work cut out for us. You know this is definitely an arena for social justice to apply itself and that's it. Thank you.

Verneda Lights

Thank you.

Thank you, Vernada. Echoing some of the concerns that Michael raised earlier.

Michael, do you have any response?

Well, I agree with Michael.

Yeah, and I'm glad that Vernada brought that up as well. And I'm not suggesting anything malicious. Yeah. I mean I'm not saying that it can't be as well, but I think this notion of bias that we're not thinking about can be very infective across all forms of artwork and in every aspect of our lives. And I know sometimes people hate hearing that. But darn it. You know? We can do better. And we just need to be consciously aware of that as artists what our own experiences and biases are. We can't negate them. But we can be conscious of that and then hopefully act responsibly.

And I think the awareness is very critical. Because if we are to function as colleagues. We need to have a level playing field. You know? I mean artists bring enough trial and tribulation to their craft as it is. I mean we have many things to overcome individually and culturally. However, why should people of color be further hampered by this extreme limitation of our own identity? You know? And it comes to a point where negligence becomes maliciousness.

Verneda Lights

You know? I can understand it. You know? People not wanting to not assume malice. But when things are so glaringly negligent and inaccurate and plays into a narrative that we all know so well. I mean I'm not crazy. And I'm not the only one here that sees it. You know? But it's really something. It's a lot to have to cope with. And I have to neutralize this negative. Energy.

Verneda Lights

Before I can even start to create on these AI engines. Okay? That is not a level playing field. And I frankly resent having one more arena in which I have to work harder. Okay? I want to be as free as the next artist. You know? And I do believe that it is incumbent upon us all to vote. And I want to voice that demand for egalitarian head space. And egalitarian access to the positive aspects of AI intelligence.

Verneda Lights

That does not instantly denigrate our words into images that we find historically offensive. Okay? So anyway. That's my rant. Hallelujah. So.

It sort of reminds me of lots of discussions that go all the way back to cave painting. And lots of people used to ask why did all the people then always paint animals? And the answer that the scientists came up with was. Well, the rock formations suggested animals to them. Well, maybe. But perhaps it had more to do with the fact that their whole existence depended on the animals. And so they had animals on the brain.

Lee Musgrave

Now, if you move that up. I'm not a real tech person. But it makes me wonder if these AI programs that each one of you have used had the ability to look at everything else you had. And what sort of things you look at regularly. And brought that in to the program.

Well, it didn't do it for me. That's for sure.

Yeah. And Lee, that's a good point. And for me, that's my cautionary tale of the opacity of the AI engines. What I think is not understood. At least for me right now is. Our images equated to one another. What, you know, in the. In the adversarial network. What, what are the nodes, you know, where, where, where is the combat happening? Where's the intelligence going on there? Because. I mean, Patrick. Patrick. Had made a point before about.

Michael Pierre Price

You know, the data is and. And other and this realists now. If you look at the imagery that data is used. And if you look at, you know, like a toilet as art. Well. Because there's a perspective there. There's a point of view there that said that. But if you look at. You know, a toilet that's on lows. Or Home Depot, you know, is that the same thing as what Duchamp did? No. But is an engine, is the AI engine looking at all pictures of this thing or that thing, not being able to distinguish at all? Those are the kinds of things that then get to kind of what Vernado is talking about as well in terms of the European-centric view of what the world is about. Are the images that are going into the, you know, a million images going into an engine, they want to have a wide variety because they've got thousands and thousands and maybe even millions of people creating things, so they want to have enough diversity.

Michael Pierre Price

But then what's real, you know, what's the substance there? And not knowing that, not having a good understanding, then for me, that's why I say, for me, these AI engines are very interesting, but the faux element to me is the opacity, that not having a good sense of what's really under the hood and how are the decisions being made? And that's what really irritates me right now is with some of these engines, it's impossible to know.

Well, it's kind of like that bit they call, you know, RTC Clark's thing, you know, Clark's third law. Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. And so, you know, so the thing is, is that this is a deterministic thing, you know, but it's just, you know, so, you know, indeterminate, you know, that, you know, we, you know, it's too complex for us to get around our heads. And Rene just said exactly right, that it does have, you know, a lot of implicit biases in it, you know, from, you know, that go, you know, go all the way back, you know, you know, to, you know, structuring of code. And all that sort of thing that, you know, it's like down to the point of even, even saying, I worked with this a little bit, even the matter of, you know, is it using English, you know, as a, as a common vernacular for coding?

Patrick Lichty

You know, I mean, that, that assumes a lot, don't you think? Yes. Yep. There you go.

Yeah. I think the engines really. Are reflecting what's out there in the world and the biases are out there. So the engines, for whatever reason, are going to pick up things like stock images of other periods of time. So I think, you know, it's a reflection. It's an actual reflection. Make us understand that the bias, if you didn't see it before, it's there now.

Allen Hirsh

Yeah.

Yeah. The big problem is that most people don't see bias. Though. No. That's the, that, you know, that's the sneaky bastardly, you know, that's, that's our blindness.

Even in the way that, you know, the, the sort of, you know, our, our art histories are constructed, you know, our notions of what the history of art is, you know, up until relatively recently, it was a fairly. Straight. Bias Eurocentric. Like this is how art came about, you know? And meanwhile, there was, you know, multiple streams of culture being developed on every continent simultaneously in reality. You know what I mean? But the story usually isn't described that way. Or it's broken down into segments that are sort of separate, you know, components.

Makes, makes me wonder if several of us. Got the same program in. In our computer and we all typed in flying turtles or whatever that was, would the image all come up the same for all of us?

Within a range, probably, you know, so well, actually, that would be good. Interesting to test.

No, but that's one of, that's one of the characteristics of, for example, mid journey, I will go back a month and take the same phrase and it never gives me. The same. Result. Yeah. There's only two.

There's a random generation part of it.

And most of these engines work off of pre-training. There are a few where you can upload your own imagery, but they're not harvesting from your particular machine. That all of the machine learning has been done on huge data sets of imagery, things like Google images and. Probably crawling various art sites and all the museum sites and, and so forth. So, a lot of biases that they're going to be echoing back are in those institutions and in those data sets. Yeah. But they're not, you know, they, they're not built to look at what's on your phone and.

David Cohen

Adapt. Whatever they're delivering based. On. That.

Does anyone know if like things like mid journey take this specific user's prompt history into effect? You know, like, is that taken into the algorithm when an image is generated? That is like, you know, if I put in the same prompt as Renata right now in real time, are the images are going to be similar or are they based on that? Each user's prompt history.

I don't know for sure, but I think right now that'd be as similar as if you. Just put it in twice. You know, I

Think that they're never similar ever for anyone, even for you.

Well, I mean, there's affinities between images. Like if you regenerate from the same prompt, those images, particularly on like an engine, like Wombo dream, where you're picking sort of a, a style parameter to begin with. Whereas some are much more wide open in terms of what they might deliver. So some of that is.

David Cohen

And, and I don't know if people saw what Dolly announced today, but now they have a whole thing where you can upload an image. Any image and regenerate new images based on whatever you're seating with visually. There

Were a couple apps where I was doing that because the imagery that you get. If you type in older women, any place it's, it's ridiculous. So I had to work a long time to get something that I didn't feel offended by because the, the, the bias is so strong for women in our, in our community. In our culture. So.

Susan Detroy

Yes. I mean, it's not historic, you know, as everyone is saying the bias is built in. So I began, I didn't show anything because I began to put in the images of my own face so that I was at least working with something that felt real, like an actual person. It wasn't relying upon these. Incorrect ideas about what it was. Woman is as she ages so that was an experience that I had it's just

So how does that affect you how does what part affect me that I'm the bias in the creative process how does that affect your work

It's infuriating it's infuriating I mean it's constant I mean there's two parts of it there's the female part and there's the aging part and the way that just this the language of our culture the imagery that even if you google older woman it's chilling actually so there's a constant there's a constant sort of rethinking and perception I have to I'm dealing with when I'm creating and using that kind of and that's part of the whole reason I'm doing the series that I'm doing is to expand the idea of who what a woman is in aging in our culture and so it's like it's mixed like I'm angry but also I'm trying to create something different so that the base of what's available is broader and bigger I

Don't know if I answered your question angry mostly I think you do a great job of infusing beauty into a space not an artistic space that can be very constricted yeah and you do imbue the artwork with the art that's available and I think a search for qualities that are feminine, you know, or female oriented. So, yeah.

Thanks, Renata. I appreciate that and appreciate your comment. I like that the word constrict is correct, is a very correct.

Oh yeah. You can, I know it's constricted. I mean, I deal with it all the time. Yeah, but you know that is a basic law of human nature that when we are presented with resistance, that pushing back against that resistance, even as it increases in its intensity, it generates strength for the person who's pushing against it. So as we encounter these progressive hurdles and difficulties, as we push back against it in our creative thinking and in assigning our philosophical preferences, we in turn, despite our frustrations, become stronger. You know, same thing for muscles. If you want to build muscle mass, you have to not only eat protein, but you have to exercise and subject those muscles that you want to enhance to progressive increases in resistance and repetition. And over time, if you keep everything going, you wind up with a stronger set of muscles.

Verneda Lights

You have strength and the consequence of that strength is felt all throughout the entire body. So hopefully that we all will get that benefit, you know, for all the frustration that we go through dealing with this stuff. Yeah.

Thanks for your perspective.

You're welcome.

This is why I love our salon so much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's refreshing to hear everybody's points of view and to see all the work today. It's, I love the artist in all of you because I don't see that in a lot of the world around me, unfortunately. And it gives me a lot of inspiration. So thanks to everybody.

Michael, I have a question. It's like, do you think that maybe the reason why you're here is because you're a person who's been working with this stuff for so long and why you don't necessarily work with this stuff figuratively is because I don't necessarily want to be in a space with some of those concerns? In other words, maybe not putting my own, not

Mapping

My own identity onto those things? Yeah.

That's interesting, Patrick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I have a friend, a contact friend of mine who's a programmer, and I'm hoping that he's going to be able to help me either create a brand new AI engine or figure out how to tweak some of the existing things out there that we can maybe address some of these issues that everybody's bringing. I don't know. But yeah, I get, I get where you're coming from on that. Totally.

I mean, I see these things. I mean, I see, you know, I see what usually comes out of these things, you know, what sort of images come out of them. They look like something off of a Dell science fiction paperback.

Yeah, exactly. Yes.

And it's, and that is so loaded. And so the thing is, if I'm doing Techspressionism, you know, I want something that reflects a technological aspect of expressionism. And that's why I was chasing the stuff that I'm doing. Yes. I basically want to get, I want to get the sausage out for the meat that I put in.

Anyone remember Eliza, the sort of AI? It's like, you know, using Eliza and expecting to get actual therapy out of it. You know, it's an interesting exercise.

But Colin, that's our society right now. I mean, you know, people look just online. Everybody wants instantaneous results. First. For everything. And, and that's the, that's the double edged sword that we have. We've created technologies that have some really powerful aspects to them. But if we get lazy, then it is, it's science is magic.

Michael Pierre Price

Yeah. And I keep thinking of the time machine. And are we going to end up being like the Eloy that have all this great technology, but we completely divorce ourselves from any understanding of it. And, and, you know, that's it. I think this. Sorry.

Oh, no. Renata, go ahead.

You talked about the cautionary tale. You had an example of the cautionary tale, Michael. And I think the cautionary tale is for AI period that we need as Vernetta pointed out a, we need a watchdog that we need to be our own watchdog, whether it's our art or our what's happening in our society. Given the. Potential. Of AI.

Allen Hirsh

We have to, we have to some way. Ferret out what works, what doesn't work, where it is reflecting things that are not positive with things that drag down our society. So it's, it's, it's got to be watched in so many areas, not just in art, but in medicine. You know, politics. Commercials, what have you. It's so easy to turn on the machine and make something happen. And who's that without giving any thought to where it comes from, why it exists and who's at the helm.

Well, I mean, there's such a basic assumption with this that I don't think that we're talking about. In other words, it's such a, such a powerful opiate. And I say that very intentionally to basically type something in and get something we expect.

Yeah.

And that is, that is such a base assumption. Yeah. In other words, so what, what happens if you typed in dog and came out, came out cat, you know, I mean, this is basically straight signal, you know, sign signifier relationship, you know, and so that's, that's the structure of the engine. And then we'd go out from that, that, and that folds in the biases that folds in everything. And so right at the moment, I'm looking at radical, radical consideration and consideration of the technology in general. Yeah.

I think, you know, seeing Vernetta's images, it made me think. I think how the images themselves are an interesting artistic commentary on the bias that is, you know, it would be, it would be a good idea for a show, you know, for, for people to put together images that illustrate bias that are AI generated images. I mean, really like to me, the best way to, to, to show somebody something is just to show them a picture of it. Right. You know, you show them, Hey, here, here's what happens when you type in dog and came out cat. And then you type in this and people are like, huh. You know, and it's like, it doesn't require any further verbal or, or, or written explanation. People just look at it and say, you know what, that's, that's, that's whack.

Well, I mean, I agree, Colin. And I think for, for me, one of the classic examples is historically, you know, going back. When you, when you got crayons, the flesh colored was. You know, white person color. Right. And that was called flesh. You know, there you go. I mean, that's, that's, but we didn't think about that as being anything bad. There, you know, wasn't necessarily something that if you weren't, you know, if you were a person of color, then you're saying, what are you talking about? So, but it's, it's that kind of subterfuge as, as human beings that.

Michael Pierre Price

You know, if we don't, and that's why I think us as artists, you know, going to Cynthia's point. I don't know about, you know, about watchdogs, but the integrity that each one of us has to maintain as an artist has to be at the core of what we create. And I think that's the bottom line for me as a, as a human being and as an artist.

So I, I have a question. Is there any software where you could. You know, if you could use it for a lot of different things. What would be the best way for you to create something that you could draw from your own images where you could put your own keywords into those images? Because that's what I'd like to say. I could take a hundred images. Put my own keywords into those images and then see what happens.

I don't know. Cynthia, but I'm working on it.

Okay.

I was going to say, there are some tools out there that you can. Partially. I'm not sure if you've seen the machine. Learning training already done. Because the reality of a person doing themselves and the server time required. To train at the level of like a Dolly. You know, it's just enormous amounts of computer cycles. To, to get something that, so it's like a starter kit. That's.

David Cohen

Partially baked with all these biased images that all the other ones are using. But then you can add some of your own. And that's the only things I've seen so far. Are tools like that. I mean, I'd be real curious to see what you build Michael, because. I think basically. Much as I enjoy playing with these things. I don't think any of these were built for artists.

David Cohen

They were built for engineers. They were built for marketers. You know, we've just happened to share that turf and we want to use it. And so. I think that's the only thing that's really interesting. And use it well, but I don't think they were built for us.

Patrick, what did you use when you fed in all of your calligraphic images?

No, that was, that was play form. And that was, that was, that was a pretty up. Pretty straight up again. You know, and. I've had in different, different, different ones and played with the biases. And things like that. And so, I mean, it was, it was, it was pretty much. I think, I think I'm going to pretty much use. Uses kind of. Variation on. Torch.

Patrick Lichty

Of things like this. Or less broad or smaller than what they'd normally look at. You know? So, I mean, it's. You know, I pretty much was playing with that specific model to try to, you know, to try to look at the comparative nature. You know, of again and that sort of thing to try to sort out what the, what the commonality between all these things was to get like what I called a personal taxonomy to try to get what was common between them and that was really specific to the form you know so you know I wasn't really trying to get it to do something that was you know emergent or generative

My approach has been to use the exact same set of words for two months but keep riffing on them and refining them and so I'm doing I'm doing only one subject and I'm just altering some of the parameters because that way I'm feeling I first of all I want to feel like I'm collaborating with it and second of all I feel like I'm not interested in depicting people because it deforms people whereas objects you have a better chance yeah

Too much like Francis Bacon all the time yeah

I

Like yeah retro sci-fi there is

To speak to a comment earlier about the watchdog component of this new arena of knowledge we're developing called artificial intelligence there's an organization called the future of life and their website is futureoflife.org and they work with the government and with leaders of industry to try and make them accountable in this arena of artificial intelligence to make sure that there's an egalitarian stance to it in healthcare and scientific adventures in general and probably also the arts but they're based in Boston and they could probably use input from members of our group so I think it's going to be a great opportunity to talk about that and I hope that this will be helpful and I hope that this will be helpful in our future work as well thank you very much for joining us today we'll see you next week bye bye you know thank

You for Neda I just want to say when I chose this topic I had a distinct feeling that we could have hours and hours of discussion the whole subject is changing daily there's more and more stuff being added Diane told me before the meeting that now you can have animation AI engines that's a new one so

Hmm Night Cafe did it for a long time but

Those were I thought they were people were throwing it throwing their still images into like a post production thing like after effects this is actually going to generate animated work no

I mean my stuff generated from you know from the images I brought it but it brought up very different things from what I've been in

Yeah well I want to thank all the artists who participated in this and I hope that you guys have a great day and I'll see you next week bye bye And you know I'm just so excited I really enjoyed seeing all the different images Yeah

It's amazing And Michael I want to comment that you really captured that dark man Oh Horror Thanks Futuristic you know subconscious dread searching

For control all that you know Thanks for Neda I really appreciate it appreciate that yeah

Yeah keep up the good work thank

You I just paste it into the chat if anyone's interested a big list I didn't gather it someone else gathered it of tools and resources for aria art and it covers a lot of different tools that are out there so if you want to go exploring it's a good starting point thank you uncle

Did you perhaps think that maybe the dark man is dark matter no

That's an interesting interesting element but no oh but cynthia I saw your post on the book physics and art oh that's a wonderful book I picked it up I'm enjoying it so far I

Love it art and physics just incredible the fact that artists have prefigured things that have happened in science just fascinating so I you can get it at a library or you can buy it really inexpensively online as secondhand online shop but I'm buying it because I got it from the library and it took me too long to read they wanted it back because I savor each chapter so yeah pick it up what's it called again art and physics yeah by leonard schlain I'll put it in the chat it's

An older book it's been around for a while so it's a bit day it's a little dated in the you know the latest physics but you know it covers a his history from way back so there's still a lot of validity to it

When I read it in 91 I was kind of like just the whole family read it oh

Really oh yeah it's cool I didn't even know it existed so it was just happenstance that I saw cynthia's post so thank you colin you're muted

Oh thank you renata so yeah I just was saying we're just about at time to stop the recording so I think I'm gonna count us down I just wanted to thank renata for proposing this topic and moderating and organizing it and I'm going to hand it over to you to give us a little bit of time to wrap up and then we'll see you next time did you have any other questions recording of this salon number 51 in three two one and cut