--- type: salon number: 103 title: Generative AI date_recorded: 2026-02-05 date_published: 2026-02-07 video_id: QT6X7WrTTmA url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA" duration_seconds: 5924 moderator: Michael Pierre Price – Phoenix, AZ USA speakers: - name: Verneda Lights country: Port Royal, SC USA start: 275 - name: Renata Janiszewska country: Lion’s Head, Canada start: 2057 - name: Colin Goldberg country: null start: 2931 - name: Sahar Moussavi country: Tehran, Iran start: 3817 transcript_source: zoom-transcript languages: ["en"] --- ## Colin Goldberg [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=0s) Action. ## Michael Pierre Price [00:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=2s) Hello, my name's Michael Pierre Price and I'm an artist, a Techspressionist artist out of Phoenix, Arizona. And I want to welcome you today. Today is February the 5th, 2026, and this is Techspressionism Salon Number 103. Before we get started on our topic today, though, we have a special salon coming up in April. And I want to introduce Erin Ko to talk a little bit about that upcoming salon. Erin. ## Erin Ko [00:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=35s) Thank you, Michael. Hi, everyone. I am the curator for New Media for the Every Woman Biennial this year. Which is an amazing show, that happens every other year in New York City. It's a fantastic salon for hundreds of artists. We believe that joy is our greatest act of subversion, so it is an energetic… Punk rock carnival-esque moment we're creating. It opens March, 7th and 8th. And runs through April 11th. Please come through if you can. And… because several Techspressionist artists are showing work in this exhibition, we'll be broadcasting the April Salon from the gallery. So, if anybody who's already got a piece in the show, in Techspressionist Group, wants to participate, please reach out to me, eco at everywoman Biennial. And then we'll probably be inviting other artists who are not necessarily affiliated with Techspressionism, but are new media creative technologists who have work in the show to talk about their work as well. So, please join us for that salon, either as a participant or as an audience member, and yeah, hope to see you. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=119s) That sounds awesome. ## Erin Ko [02:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=120s) Come in person if you can. Come on the… The 8th is gonna be huge, and the 11th is gonna be huge. We're gonna have everything, every medium. ## Michael Pierre Price [02:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=130s) That's great, Erin, thank you. It's always cool to have a live show like that, so I think that's gonna be a really fun salon to look forward to, so thanks. All right, so today's topic is reimagining the artist with a specialization in generative AI, and this topic had been suggested, At last month's After Party by Verneda Lights, and she's going to be presenting first. And I'm gonna read just a little bit of her bio, because it's pretty impressive. Verneda Lights is a polymath artist, writer, and retired physician whose practice resides at the intersection of art, technology, and cultural memory. A graduate of Ren Mawr College, she earned her MD from the University of Pennsylvania Perlman School of Medicine. And later completed an MBA at Strayer University. Expanding her interdisciplinary reach into emerging technologies, she holds certification in generative AI from the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering. A cultural griot of the Gullah Geechee Nation, Brenada grounds her artistic practice in the preservation of ancestral memory, oral history, and diasporic identity. Identifying as a Techspressionist, she engages artificial intelligence as a collaborator in multimodal reasoning. Integrating text, image synthesis, narrative worldbuilding, and digital painting to explore identity, spirituality, and speculative futures. Her AI-driven projects have received international validation. She was twice selected to present at the Yale Ultraspace Symposium 2023-2024, where her acclaimed AI narrative project, Caterpillar Dreams, a speculative meditation on transformation and consciousness, was later published in the Yale Ultraspace printed volume. Her AI artworks were also featured in Merely Random, a 6-month immersive exhibition at Art in Space Gallery. Welcome, Bernada. I look forward to your presentation. ## Verneda Lights [04:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=272s) Thank you very much, Michael. It's a pleasure to be here today with this esteemed group of artists that we have, I've traveled with over the last couple of years. Through the pandemic, and watched us all evolve. And one of those, steps in the evolution Of my work as an artist. Involved the use of artificial intelligence. I was initially very disappointed in what I saw for AI, because I early on, ran into many biases. That were, obvious in the creation of culturally relevant imagery. So I decided that the best way to engage with this Hurdle would be to train the models to understand images of both, various and, hard to explain. And, and to train the models to… Exhibit… A type of intelligence that is sensitive. To culturally relevant moments. So I'm going to start off by giving a discussion of what AI is, and an overview for those of you who are not heavily engaged in AI. It took a lot of, thinking, because, you know, coming fresh out of that, Johns Hopkins experience, that there's a lot of technical AI code stuff that's still jangling around in my consciousness, for better or for worse, and having built AI, I now have a portfolio of agentic AI that I have created, and so I'm trying to re-emerge from that, sort of deep water experience into the creative space. That we inhabit at this point in time. So I'm gonna read some stuff, it may be a little bit boring, and I apologize for that. And if you do not understand something, you need me to stop and explain something, you know, put a note in the chat, or raise your hands, and I'll try not to go too long, okay? And after that, I'll give a discussion of my artwork and how AI has impacted it. So, let's start here. Let's get this together. Redefining the artist's AI. In considering the topic of today's discussion, I concluded that perhaps the title for this salon should be Redefining the Approach to Artistry AI, rather than defining the artist AI. Because what an artist is has likely been unchanged since paintings were blown, etched, and painted onto the walls of the Lasko Caves 6,000 to 21,000 years ago. The journey from Lascar to generative AI to what it is that I do is vast. But I believe, unchanged, with respect to what an artist is. I say that because, in thinking about it, I believe that the function of the artist throughout time has been basically the same. So what accounts for the differences in what we see between then and now? What has changed is how the artist creates it is the instruments of creativity that have created the differences in the visual landscape of human artistry. In examining how AI has redefined this trajectory, we have to first define what an artist is. We then have to embrace at least a minimalist definition of what AI is, then…. We'll take a look at how AI has impacted the artistic process in general, and finally. I will examine my own artistic process as a Techspressionist, as it has been impacted by AI. So how, then, will we define an artist? What is that baseline definition? To me, an artist is a class Artistry is a class of creatives. Artists are the spin doctors of reality. They keep the… The vast communication configurations of the evolution of human life, as reflected through events. Shared and diverse cultures and aesthetics. Artists are the dictionaries. And keepers of the visual and written vocabularies that tell the stories about how we and our ancestors perceived and interact with the world around us. In terms of AI, there are a few definitions we need to look at. I've narrowed it down to two to three basic definitions. The first is machine learning. What is that? Machine learning is a way of programming computers so that they learn from data instead of being given step-by-step rules. You give the system many examples, and it finds patterns on its own, so it can make predictions or decisions like guessing which emails are spam. Artificial intelligence, or AI. Well, the term artificial intelligence was coined by John McCarthy, a computer scientist, in 1956, so it's been around for quite a while. Artificial intelligence is when a computer system can do things that usually need human intelligence, like understanding language, recognizing pictures, or making decisions. It follows rules, or learned patterns, so they can solve problems. Play games, drive cars, and more. Regarding generative AI, I will define it like this. Generative AI. It's a type of artificial intelligence. That can create new things, such as text, images, music, or code, that look like they were made by humans. It learns from huge amounts of data. Then uses what it has learned to produce new content, like writing an essay, or drawing a picture from a prompt. The phrase, generative AI became common in the 2010s and 2020s, as models like GANS, or G-A-N-S, which stands for General Adversarial Networks, were introduced by Ian Goodfullo and his colleagues in 2014. And also Transformers, introduced in 2017. The Transformers made it possible to generate very realistic content. Now, how does generative AI differ from AI? Is it different? Well, artificial intelligence, or AI, is the big overall field that encompasses any computer system that can perform tasks that require human intelligence. Generative AI is one kind of AI that focuses on creating new content. That's the key concept. Generative AI creates words, images, sounds, etc. Not just… Exhibiting recognition or predicting, but taking that information and then generating new things. So all generative AI is artificial intelligence. But not all Artificial intelligence is generative AI. For example, a spam filter or a chess engine is AI, but it is not generative AI because it does not create new content. It mainly classifies or chooses among options. And in a nod, today, This being Black History Month, I want to acknowledge The fact that we have AI because of the foundational work done by a Black mathematical genius named David Blackwell, who was born in 1919 and passed away in 2010, so… this work very much precedes all of us here, but also extends into our lifetimes, not… too far back, and David Blackwell is called the father of AI. Because his math ideas created the rules that modern AI still follows, even though he worked long before today's computers and robots. He studied how to make the best decisions when you do not know everything, using probability and statistics to show how to choose actions that work well on average. Which is exactly what AI systems try to do when they learn from data. Now, AI creates images In two phases. First, there's the learning phase, where the AI is shown millions of images with short text descriptions. Then the AI analyzes what has been fed, and it learns patterns, like what cat, sunset, or in the style of Van Gogh. You… what it looks like. AI does not save whole pictures. It learns rules and patterns for how things tend to look so that's an important consideration when people become very afraid of their particular work being used in AI. Now, after the learning phase, the AI goes through creative phase. Where it responds to prompts. So when you type a prompt like a blue cat on the moon, the AI first starts with random static, like the snow that you see on TV. Then, step by step, it changes that noise, guessing what shapes and colors match your words. Each step's each step makes the image less noisy. And more clear until it looks like a finished picture that fits your prompt. This process is often done with a special kind of model called a diffusion model, which is now the main method used in modern image generators. Now, some of the best-known AI image generators that you may have encountered are DAL-E, that was created by OpenAI, Midjourney, made by the Independent Midjourney Research Lab. Stable Diffusion, which is an open-source model released by Stability AI and its collaborators. There's Adobe Firefly built into Adobe tools, like Photoshop and Illustrator. There's Imogen, developed inside Google, mainly shown in Google products, not as a public standalone app. And there's also AI included in major platforms such as Facebook. Which allows you to experience what multimodal reasoning is, by… Applying its AI in the creation of Facebook posts, wherein you can use images and also sound. Now, we ask a question, has generative AI actually redefined what an artist is. I thought about this. And I've decided no. It has not. Actually redefined what an artist is. Generative AI has not given a single new agreed-on definition of artist. But it has strongly challenged and stretched how people think about what an artist is and does. So how is it changing the idea of artists? Well, now, some people see an artist as the person who designs, curates, or directs the AI system. Choosing data, writing prompts, and selecting outputs, not just making every pixel by hand. AI studies and interviews with artists show a mix of fear and excitement. They love it or hate it. Some feel threatened by… The concept that AI makes art less authentic. Whereas others… Like Sasha Stiles, treat AI as a creative partner or tool. Public debates and research point out that questions of originality, ownership and intent, Are now central. To deciding who counts as the artist when AI is involved. So what has not changed? What has not changed is that galleries. Competitions and critics still usually care about human intention. Context and meaning, not just the image or text itself, which gives and keeps the human artist role important. Some galleries and competitions even forbid any use of AI at any point in the artistic process. Many scholars and artists argue that AI is more like a powerful new medium, like photography once was, or more like that than a full replacement for human artists, even if it does blur the lines. So I think, personally, that AI empowers artists to prioritize the pathways of discovery. It is an agent of change that helps the artist shape the trajectory of their work from sensory experience to collection creation, marketing, and revenue generation. It is an extension of the artist's mind, memory, and hands. It brings the environment into close proximity to the artist. By reducing the space required to save paint, brushes, and canvases, digitization of art has made more room for living. Recently, Philadelphia-based artist Michael Elam said. Something that really struck me as being key to understanding why we're here today. He said that evolution happens with experimentation. Exploring possibilities. So this is an important concept when considering how AI has impacted modern artists. The power of AI is that it facilitates artistic experimentation in general. And catalyzes the discovery of individual artistic styles. Regarding my own personal use of AI, I see AI as a collaborative tool. I see it as an extension of my mind, my memory, and my hands. I see it as a depository of human aesthetics. It is the same attitude that I've had since I first started to draw by hand using digital instruments like Paint, Paint Shop Pro, and Photoshop back in 2000. I see digital instruments and AI as being multi-purpose instruments. That helped me to actualize my artistic visions. AI also provides me with the analytical instruments that help me probe my artistic growth in real time, rather than retrospectively. I see digital instruments, AI inclusive, as being potentially an equalizing force capable of making art accessible to those who are economically disadvantaged or physically disabled. Artificial intelligence. Does not reduce the works… and the pressure of creating artwork that exists To the artistic process. AI instruments require a great deal of attention. Because it has many biases, and can often miss the mark when rendering things that require Accuracy, such as human anatomy. Using AI to create fine art requires multimodal reasoning. That is the ability to maintain continuity of artistic intent across multiple platforms. Which involved text, plus image, plus sound, plus motion. As an artist that collaborates with AI, I see the prompts that I write as being in an underpainting. Without which, the finished product cannot be made. The AI responds to the general intent and specifics of my prompt, my syntax, and linguistic idiosyncrasies. As well as my history of interactions. From the noise presented to it, it assembles and clarifies its response to my prompt. Based on what I've written, and what it knows about the arts, History of Humanity, and me. So… Now that we've gone through that. I'm going to share some examples of how AI is relevant to me as a Techspressionist. Techspressionism is defined. You see this, mentioned on the website, Techspressionism.com. That expressionism is an artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience. So… when we think of AI, we would… tend, with our own biases, to project that it is cold, and it does not, have the capability, or has limited capability, to deal with human emotions, or to convey human emotions, so I… throughout my use of AI, I have probed those limits. As a physician, you know, I'm very familiar with the landscape of the human soul. So, I took AI, basically, on a journey that explored those realms. Of human feeling. And communication, to see whether or not it is capable of making the point visible. So, I'm gonna share my screen, and, you guys, you know, bear with me, and… We will… Crave… Hold on a second…. Okay…. I'm not seeing my… Thing here on the screen. Hold on a second…. Okay. That's not it, hold on…. Okay, we're gonna try again. So I don't know what's going wrong here. Hold on. Okay, we've got it. Here we are. Can you see my screen? ## Michael Pierre Price [25:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=1521s) Yes. ## Verneda Lights [25:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=1522s) Okay. Well, I mentioned at the beginning of my discussion that,. We have our point of reference or origin for artistry in the caves of Lascaux. And here we have an example. We have a photograph of a group that Are witnessing that incredible display…. And I want you to make note of the… Configuration, how we have the… Semicircular. Ceiling and later the walls of the… the cave that The cave people, the cave artists, Paleolithic artists, decided to use in their presentation of daily life through the arts. And here we have another. Image. And here… we have… the immersive exhibit, of my Techspressionist artwork. Black Dandies at the Art and Space Gallery in Dubai. And you see basically here the same configuration, which I thought was striking. The semicircular presentation, and the ceiling involvement, etc. And these are more images. And here… we have… another mode in which I… use…. AI to envision a poem that I wrote And you tell me… whether or not The poem was captured. The poem is entitled, Virulent Partisan Politics. Volcanic vomit of lies spewed forth in virulent partisan politics. In decent dissent, souls dent in virulent partisan politics. Convent of gents and indecent consent. Prayers spun in Lent. Do not repent. In virulent partisan politics. Deny assent. Refuse consent. To what extent are wills unbent in virulent partisan politics? Malcontent spewing bilious content defy Advent. Spiraling rents are indecent. Decent presence from virulent partisan politics. So he… we have the dark, realm, basically, being captured by the AI. In a hellscape of sorts. But the experiment in which I tried to have the AI incorporate the poem into the image failed. Because it only picked up some of the words and then sort of ad-libbed or hallucinated its own version that I do not understand. I'll have a linguist take a look at it to tell me whether or not they are indeed words at all. And here's another. Rendering that it did of the virulent partisan politics discussion. And here, I decided to take a look at could… The AI helped me capture despair. And here we have an elderly gentleman. This is a meditation on how older people are discarded in this culture. This is envy. From a series of… artworks, the collaborations that I did on the seven deadly sins. This is grief. This is mercy. This is surrender. In a baptism scene. This is a dream. This is Martin Luther King as I envision him. If he were still alive, he would be 97 years old. And here he is surrounded by the luminaries of our time. This image speaks for itself. And we'll… I'll just be quiet. For the next images. So, let me know if you think they captured the moment. And that's it. ## Michael Pierre Price [32:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=1924s) Oh, Vernita, wonderful presentation, and… Seeing the artwork is just fabulous, thank you. ## Verneda Lights [32:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=1932s) Thank you. My honor. ## Michael Pierre Price [32:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=1938s) Oh, okay, so, moving along to our next presenter. Renata Janiszewska, Renata, up to you now. ## Renata Janiszewska [32:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=1950s) Hi, everyone. Thank you, Michael. And I want to say thanks to Michael and Vernita for putting together this salon. I'm just gonna share my screen. So, today I'm going to be talking about launching movement in Mid-Journey Lab. I started working with Midjourney back in July. Of 2022, when it was in V2. And here's an example of a prompt I gave it. Back then, Midjourney only allowed me to make images with word prompts. And I had a series going about cakes, palaces, and castles made of cake. And I would throw some artist names in there, and I basically was just trying to see what it would give me stylistically. And so there's the example that came from the prompt. That was back in July of 2022. And 2 days ago, I put the identical prompt into Midjourney, And that was the result. Not only can Midjourney give me more elaborate Renderings, but it can make things move. I always make my images starting with I make them with images rather than with language. I find that I enjoy the process of marrying two or three disparate images together, and… I also found that when it started to make my images move. It did it in a number of different ways. So, I'm going to show you… the first example is a collage. So, this head here was made two years ago in Midjourney, and the hat and the plants were collaged onto it later, recently. And then I put some stickers onto the collage, so these were made in… Instagram stories, but you can also make stickers on your iOS devices. And now I'm going to show you what happens when it becomes move… has movement. And notice that the main character moves, but these three characters here also move in different ways, so see if you can catch the different ways they move. Et j'appense. So, besides taking characters, it can also animate still images that are abstract. And in this particular sequence, I'm going to show you a short video that was made with 4 different paintings. Abstract paintings of mine, but I also want to point out that there's, in the opening sequence, some of the abstract shapes, particularly this backward C and this tangle of lines, they become… Anthropomorphized, which is something that the AI does, and usually I don't really find it very helpful. It will make butterflies and… parts of people where I don't really want them, but in this case, it made this little man, who you'll see in the first opening seconds of the video. And I also want to mention that all the music that you're going to hear in my presentation was made with Suno AI. And the reason I like working with Suno rather than GarageBand, which is how I used to make all my music, is that I can write the words, give them to the AI, give it a prompt, and continue from there. And it also will Translate my words into different languages. So you can hear in this presentation, you'll hear a different… languages being sung. Come on, Eclair. You know what? D-do. So, what I'm really pleased about is that Midjourney has started to be able to copy my own particular abstract paintings. Shapes, colors are actually very true to the originals. And, The… the way it comes out is it gives you four… four different times. So the first iteration will be 5 seconds. You can go to 9 from that same first iteration, you can go to 16, and 20 is the max. And I usually work with 5 to 9 second clips, because I like to take the best part of each one and edit them into my video. Also, I want you to notice how the metallics in this painting, the gold up here. They really do look metallic in the video. So, from going to… from abstract, I'm going to take you into some of the characters that I've created. And character creation has been going on for about 2 years. You'll see a variety of types. Mostly these are chic Venetians. They're either from the past, and they're in period costume, or they're from the present. And for those of you who like fashion, one of my favorite designers is Alexander McQueen, so you might see a little bit of his influence. Every bay and broken headland, cliffs that cradle, cliffs that stand, zigzag hard, he knows the. With a leaning hand. Five nights on observing We got to the western…. Here's another set. Swelter pencil and flies inside. Muerte quiz frazades. Super polio con fervo. Sin luido solo super favor. And finally. Raison dans l'auten d'ure. So from those characters, we go to abstraction plus characters. So what this next video will show you is how the AI marries characters that it actually made up with abstract paintings that I've done, and the lines from my paintings and the colors are the most recognizable aspects of what it has made. In this case, just watch out. I wanted to point out that the dimensionality is really good. So, this jacket, keep… take a look at that when you're watching the video and see what happens. And also, my custom brushes become three-dimensional with characters layered in between them, so the brushes are in the front and in the back. It's called Titus 8, and it's part of my series called House of Grown. His motion's corner. Thank God. Each pivot like a crow. After the breath of hands with truth. The geometry of men is split tube and stitches step by step. And the last work I'm going to show you is fairly recent, and it comes out of… there's a breakthrough, in a way, that I had, where I did an installation work in South Korea, in Gwangju, at GMAP Museum, and it was in a black box space, and all three walls had video playing on them from floor to ceiling. And the sound came up from the floor. And with the installation shots the museum sent me, I decided to feed them into mid-journey, and I got this sort of thing. Now, this was the result of more than just one image. It was this image plus a few others. And here's another iteration. And what I liked here was I got a space, I got an actual…. Space, like a theatrical space that I could used to make my characters come alive. And there's a ceiling here and a floor there, as you can see. Just showing you a little bit of the process. So, the prompt was, she comes out from the wall, and this one in the bottom left is the one I liked, so I upscaled it, which Midjourney allows you to do, so that's always a good thing to do before you make a video out of a still. And then I decided to put it into my painting software called Adobe Fresco, which is an app that I use to make paintings with. It's free, by the way. I recommend you try it. And, it allows you to make custom brushes as well, but in this case, what I did was I put the piece… sorry, I put the still image in. And then I put another still image in of my two twins here, and I made it integrated with the mise-en-scene, and then I animated it, and this is what it gave me. So that was the 5-second version, and here's a slightly longer clip. Don't. Exciting, standing alone at sea. And this is a piece of writing about The work that you're going to see next. And some of my other works. It's written by E. Herbert, an art historian. So, this really is a haunted… Set, and a haunted… work, and ghosts are definitely part of it, so I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for your attention today. Boom! It ends up being on the farthestra. Be the most fellow we found in there. Been fairly shiver than a hard and breathe. Spaces may be self a silver platter. But can you ever listen anytime? From door to bass, and I buried the fed. The spider stays the first sunshine of the day. He hopes about a broken crate of blue. And all three sleep alone now. To close with this is not a lap between. ## Michael Pierre Price [46:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=2801s) Wow, Renata, that's spectacular. Yeah, wow. I think we're… I'm hoping we'll have time for questions for everybody who's presenting today, because I think there's a lot to discuss and go over, so thanks, thanks, Renata. Next up, Colin Goldberg. Hey, Colin, welcome! ## Colin Goldberg [47:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=2825s) Hey, what's up, Michael? Thank you for, taking the moderation role, and thanks, Vernada, for that great introduction to the topic. Renat, I really enjoyed Checking out that work, too. So yeah, you know, AI, is something that, I started experimenting with, I guess, with text, as far as generating text. It might have been, I don't know, 2021 or something like that. When ChatGPT first came out, I started asking it to write haikus. For me, and then I was posting, like, an image out of my archive, one of my old art images, and I would try to give it a prompt that related to the image, and then, post the image with the… The AI, and I started tagging them, with the hashtag Daily AIHiku. And then, you know, I went on with that for a while until I kind of… you know, that was… that was spent, that… that idea. But then, you know, I guess I resumed using it when I started playing around with Midjourney, and I've been using AI, to create the graphics for all of our salons, the sort of promo graphics. I'm just gonna share my screen here and kind of jump into some of this stuff, I want to share, so… can you guys see my screen okay? Yeah. Okay, cool. So… I scrolled back, if you go to our salon page, which is just Techspressionism.com slash salon, you can see we're on number 103, and I scrolled all the way down to… 51, which is 2022. I think that's our first salon that was dedicated to the topic of AI, and right around that time is when I started actually using AI, these might have been, collages from some stock photography, but this one, I believe, was a mid-journey generated image. And then pretty much since then, all of the images, have been, you know, done in collaboration with some sort of AI. And, you know, that's something where I see it more as illustration than art, than my art, anyway. It serves a particular purpose. And all the typography was done manually, but… you know, in creating these graphics, some of them are not AI, like this is an installation shot from the exhibition in Chelsea, that Tommy Mintz, curated a while back, you know, so not everything is AI, but A lot of the images, the majority of them, I used AI. So, that was a way, and this one here, too, for this particular salon. Was generated in Midjourney, this image, and usually it takes a couple rounds of prompting, and sometimes I'll manipulate it a little bit afterwards. So, fast forward to, like, when, I don't know, last year or so, I picked up and started playing around with Sora, which is OpenAI's text-to-video prompting tool, and this was the first one that I… that I did, just for the fun of it. I asked, Sora to come up with something, basically the prompt was Andy Warhol talking about Techspressionism, so let me see if I can… just channeled through the circuitry. You don't hide the machine, you let it… What we're doing with Techspressionism is treating code like pigment, brushstrokes made of data. It's still about emotion, just channeled through the circuitry. You don't hide the machine, you let it… What we're doing with Techspressionism is treating… like… so basically, and I did ask it also to put it in the Guggenheim, and I kind of liked how it made the Guggenheim have this sort of digital display wrapped around the rotunda, and that was just something that, you know, Sora came up with. And, I think it's interesting, too, experimenting with Sora, that, you know, you can, at this point, have it generate, video with people who are deceased, but not with people who are alive. So you could say Bruce Lee, for instance, which I… made videos with me and him in it, or pretty much anybody that I thought, oh, wouldn't it be cool to have a conversation with this person? So anyway, that was… but if you say, I don't know. Our president, for example, or some other person, the platform will not let you do that. There's an artist, part of the group Sustain, who's a French artist who has figured out a way to incorporate living people, and his work is quite political and pretty humorous. Using AI tools. So… you know, again, that usage of the software really was not something that's… I consider my art. It was really kind of like… playing, you know, with the tool, see, oh, I wonder what I can do with this. You know, and then in the last couple of months, I sort of had an aha moment where I did actually find a way that I could incorporate AI into my… my own work, which I consider, I consider myself primarily to be a painter. So you can see this piece on the screen here, is a painting called Invictus. So the way that I work is I, I paint on linen, and then basically print on top of it. I bring the image of the painting. Into the computer, do a digital drawing that is superimposed upon that layer, and then actually run the painted surface through my printer, which is an old Epson 9800. And so… and then rinse and repeat, do multiple runs of that. So, this is actually… this body of work, the overpainted work, or overprinted work, rather, is really where, I kind of, like, you know, came up with this… that's… that's what originated this idea, this term, Techspressionism, for me, initially, was the combination of Gestural painting and digital overprinting. So, you know. This is the starting point for what I'm going to show you, and… that's a piece from, a series of mine, called Wireframes, and I have a bunch of different work on my website from this series, paintings, works on paper, etc. And I'll just show you some of the paintings. So these are various paintings, you know, going kind of like in chronological order, this being the most recent. And going back, and some of these are quite large. Like, this is the finished piece, of the one that was, in the video of me, running through my printer, and that gives you a sense of the scale. It's a 3x4 foot, piece. Some of them are larger, let's see… yeah, this one is probably the largest, 36 by 64, and it's actually… I created these ones, this painting, and a lot of them in particular, to correspond with, HD dimensions, so it's a 16 to 9 aspect ratio, and that was a conscious sort of choice. Also rotated 9 degrees vertically, same proportions. So anyway. I started playing around with this idea of feeding the actual images of the hand-painted work into Sora with a variety of different prompts, and, well, I'm skipping ahead here. So, after I started doing this overprinting, which I first ran a painted service through my printer back in 2005, I started… experimenting with augmented reality and AR. So, the first body of work that I, incorporated AR into were these digital drawings called metagraphs, and you could see, as you're looking at it through an app, it'll animate, and these are digital drawings. So… At some point, I started exhibiting these, at a gallery, and some of the people coming through said, hey, can you… can you animate your paintings? And I said, well, no. You know, like, there's really no way that I can go in and make the brush strokes move, and make the different layers move. Well, I was wrong, actually. So, I tried it. I tried running my images of my paintings through Sora, and I sort of had, like Renata said, an aha moment where I thought, you know, this is it. This is how I can actually use AI in my work in a way that feels authentic. So I'm going to show you a little video now. It's about 4 minutes in total, of, this body of work that I'm calling Motion Paintings, and these are basically the paintings, brought to life through, generative AI. So, it'll be that same body of work. And let me just make sure the volume is on here. Okay. So that's it. ## Verneda Lights [01:01:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3664s) That's incredible. Thank you. Thanks, Colin. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:01:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3669s) Yeah. ## Verneda Lights [01:01:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3669s) We waited. ## Colin Goldberg [01:01:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3670s) The music was also made with Suno, by the way, which I did this morning. I didn't know I was going to be presenting until you reached out to me yesterday, so I was like, well, I gotta put something together. But I did have the video prepared, I used it for a residency proposal, so I kind of forgot I had that, but… ## Michael Pierre Price [01:01:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3690s) Awesome. ## Colin Goldberg [01:01:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3691s) Yeah, that's it. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:01:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3692s) It's really cool to see that progression. From earlier work to transformative with metagraphs and then now animating, it's really, really interesting. ## Verneda Lights [01:01:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3703s) Yeah, the animations are powerful. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:01:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3705s) Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Collin. ## Cynthia DiDonato [01:01:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3708s) Black and white, Colin. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:01:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3710s) That was cool, yeah. ## Cynthia DiDonato [01:01:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3712s) Beautiful. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:01:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3714s) Okay, we have one more presenter, Sahar Moussavi, and it looks like, I guess, Renita, you're gonna be. ## Verneda Lights [01:02:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3721s) Yes. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:02:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3722s) She's presenting on her behalf. ## Verneda Lights [01:02:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3724s) App. Sahar is unable to be with us today. But she sent her, presentation via Google Docs. And, do you see it on the screen? ## Michael Pierre Price [01:02:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3739s) Yes. ## Verneda Lights [01:02:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3740s) Okay. So this is, from Sahar Moussavi. Sahar is one of our members that lives in Iran. And we have a beautiful artwork here. She's been creating art for a long time, and… she experiments also with converting her or collaborating with the AI to expand upon the work that she created earlier in her life. So, here she states, in this art series, I leveraged VizCom AI, an AI engine tailored for product designers. To transform my hand-drawn sketches into various rendered images. Utilizing my original artwork as style references, the AI engine generated new interpretations frequently in the form of 3D renders. So here we go. Here we have the original image. And we see the various ways in which the AI picks up on the colors… and the shapes, and interprets. And here, again, the original image. ## Verneda Lights [01:03:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3821s) Huh. ## Verneda Lights [01:03:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3824s) You know, I'm… Expanding on the color and the form. Very intricate pen image here. And lastly… Here. Yes, she has the 3D object interpretation. I think, Sahar does a wonderful job by hand. So that's the end of the, presentation. It's very, very brief. And powerful. I'll stop share now. Thank you. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:04:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3880s) Will it? Thanks for… thanks for presenting that on her behalf, Renita. I… I mean, one of the things I found really fascinating about Sahar's work, is the work that she does in 3D and creating those 3D environments, and if anybody is unfamiliar with her work, I would definitely suggest checking it out. She… she does some really fascinating, fascinating things with 3D worlds. ## Verneda Lights [01:05:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3904s) Yes she does. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:05:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3908s) Okay, well, we do have time for some Q&A here, which is really lovely, because oftentimes we don't get that chance. So if anybody wants to raise their hand or use the raise hand tool, let's get some discussion going. Lee. Daily day. ## Lee Day [01:05:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3933s) I… I had a question for Colin about, it seemed like, to me, like there was almost two gen… two types of animations within those, within the videos, like, the first part sort of seemed a bit flatter, and then the second part seemed to be much more 3D. Did you use different tools, or were they just different generations, or what, or… or what? ## Colin Goldberg [01:05:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=3957s) Well, it's interesting, because I used the same tool for everything, but I did use different prompts for each one of the pieces. Usually, like, I did a whole bunch of different prompts, and just sort of curated the ones that I liked the best, and edited them into a, 23-second sequence, surprise, 23 is my, is my number. But, what I did see was that certain pieces were understood by the AI as far as the way that they are put together in layers better than others. So, that's something that I'm actually exploring now in making the paintings, where, say, I layer, A wireframe form on top of gestural marks. It's gonna understand that better than if I put the gestural marks over a wireframe, say, or if there's hard-edge painting, it's gonna be able to differentiate something like a sphere that's a hard-edge element better than, say, just… you know, it's interesting, the second set were works on paper, and that first one, actually, was from 2005, so this is a piece that's over 20 years old. And it really was able to pull that apart in a pretty remarkable way, you know? Every time it did something, that was really effective, I was just… you know, flabbergasted. I was like, how could it actually pull these brushstrokes apart and sort of move them independently? And a lot of that is really where I see it being a collaborative A collaborative project with the AI, in that, like, I'm not instructing it to do very specific things. Some of them… some of the initial prompts were as simple as. Flying through Techspressionist space. That was actually the first prompt that I used in the first painting that I fed through it, and it understood. It did something that I kept, actually, with that prompt, which… that… that was another… that was sort of when the light bulb went off. I was like. Wow. It actually understood what I wanted to do, and it did something that I would have envisioned I would be instructing it to do. It just kind of, like, did it. So, yeah, I mean, there was the same tool, though. Sora is what I used for everything. ## Verneda Lights [01:08:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4111s) May I comment, also, Colin? The… AI, as I mentioned in my talk, the AI is trained to recognize patterns. And it has a very sophisticated concept of patterns, because it's been fed on the patterns of the world. So what it did was, in encountering your work, it analyzed patterns that it recognized. And then arrange the presentation and the movement of that presentation of the patterns that it perceived. In a way that is aesthetically pleasing. So that is what AI does. It doesn't save, hold pictures or entire images. It is trained to recognize patterns, and we have a lot of, patterns that we generate in our individual artworks, and you certainly have them in your multiple layers of artistic renderings. You know, I imagine there could be 4 or 5 different layers of things going on, so within those 4 or 5 different layers. They're probably, you know, X to the 10th power, or whatever amount of patterns. That the AI can analyze, and it can… we do not understand its history of pattern perception. We don't have all that in our heads. So, it's gonna surprise us. By showing us the breadth of what it recognizes in the work that we do. I think that's one of the main values of AI, is this ability to recognize patterns, and it'll learn, and as you present more and more work, it will begin to find patterns within the patterns that you have in your artwork. You know, your pieces are very moving, and The syncopation. Was just incredible. I appreciate it very much. ## Colin Goldberg [01:10:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4234s) It's interesting, that, like, I know with Midjourney, you can use, I forget what they call it, but, like, you can do style… you can basically feed it a whole bunch of stuff, and it'll use that to generate new work in a particular style. I don't think Sora actually has that yet, as a piece of functionality, but, you know, I'm hoping they incorporate that, because I think it'll be interesting. But I did think that, to me, like, it was… the most interesting was how it could actually pull apart physical brushstrokes that I made with my hand. Like, when I see it moving hard-edge elements around, it's like, okay, that's kind of like what I was doing manually in Adobe Animate, just, like, moving these things around, but for it to actually move individual brushstrokes around, and like, you know, and drips, and other stuff like that. That just blew my mind, I mean… ## Renata Janiszewska [01:11:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4289s) Excellent. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:11:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4290s) Ever. We… oh, sorry. ## Renata Janiszewska [01:11:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4293s) As a user of Midjourney, I know Michael… Michael uses Midjourney heavily. And one thing I like about what they've done lately is they let you make a mood board. So, you can make a mood board of 8 images, and then plug that into your… where your prompt would be, and it will influence the look of what comes out. It's very imprecise, but I actually enjoy the imprecision and the mistakes and whatever you want to call it, the idiosyncrasies of AI right now are really good for artists. Maybe not so much for people who want Pristine realism, but that's not the goal. So I'm… I'm kind of hoping it takes a long time to… to evolve into perfection, whatever. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:12:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4342s) Okay, we have a couple raised hands. Cheryl. ## Verneda Lights [01:12:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4347s) Hi, I just… I'm… I'm, like, overwhelmed here. I'm so far behind. I started in 19… 83, with… Kind of crazy art with, a computer, like, the little one… mini computer that Apple had. And there was just a keyboard there, and… we could print from the other room, and whatever, whatever, and I made a piece that I don't know if I've shown you guys, but… consistent of… all you could use was copy paper, and I put together, like, 12… 12 pieces of copy paper, and… and there was my work, so… that's… that's in 1983. And I had so much trouble with Adobe and all that, and I'm gonna have to go back and eat my words, but… I guess without Photoshop, it seems to me I'd be dead. I don't know… you know, what everybody else thinks about that. But it seems I need to have Photoshop in order to continue with all the, you know, with the art. You know, animation and all that stuff. My screen is different, is everybody hearing me okay? ## Verneda Lights [01:13:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4430s) Yep, we hear you. ## Verneda Lights [01:13:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4432s) Okay, I'm just so overwhelmed by the beautiful work that everybody presented today, and I just wondered if anybody wanted to hear, what ChatGPT said about itself. It's kind of funny, because I asked… I asked it, what is generative AI? It says… Generative… Okay, why is this? Oh, gosh. Well, never mind. This always happens to me. Something always goes wrong. Okay, never mind, thank you very much for listening. ## Verneda Lights [01:14:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4477s) Thank you. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:14:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4479s) Okay, Lee. ## Lee Day [01:14:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4481s) So, I was wondering whether anyone had used, either Comfy AI or, or interfaces like Imagine, Art. Which… basically allow you to choose your own models, which type of models, you know, and set up your own workflows and that type of thing. It sounds like Midjourney is doing some of that. But I, I, I don't know if these, these are a little bit… more modular, maybe, or they're… ## Verneda Lights [01:15:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4509s) The Night Cafe… Night Cafe has a similar layout. You can choose the model that you want to use. As well as the style. ## Lee Day [01:15:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4519s) Of variations within that model. ## Lee Schnaiberg [01:15:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4523s) Lee, I've played with Comfy a bunch. And if you've ever played with any, anything like Resolume. Yeah. Or jitter, max MSP jitter. Setting up nodes in Comfy is really similar to that kind of a node building, and it's really fun. I think if you dabble around in it, you'll… you'll have some good experiences. ## Lee Day [01:15:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4556s) Yeah, Imagine Art does a lot of the same things, except it's a little more expensive, and you have to, you know, it's already built for you in many ways, but it allows you to use a lot of the same different models, and they keep on throwing in all the new ones. So it's just… it sounds like you all are… have… found your tool and seemed to be focused on it. ## Verneda Lights [01:16:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4578s) Well, I've worked with all of the biggies, so to speak. You know, and try to make as much creative use of some of the minor players, such as Meta AI. But I find that in terms of creativity, And, the AI… getting a feel for what it is you want to convey, Midjourney, pretty much captures What you want. Best. Without really having a… too much of a, Mmm… not much discord in terms of, what you see on… in the rendering versus what you've typed into your prompt. So, some of the others do well, things like Night Cafe. Although it offers you a variety of models, it doesn't really, really, really have the nuances that you find in Midjourney. And even ChatGPT has gotten much better. For the last two images in my presentation, where I, presented, what happened with Renee Goode and Alex Peretti, that was done with ChatGPT. A year or two ago, I could not have gotten that, cohesion, that level of cohesion from ChatGPT. He's very proficient with words, but not images, but the image… image capability has caught up. So, I like to play around. Amongst the ones that, you know, that I use, I have a stable of about 5 or 6. Image generators that I use. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:18:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4685s) Lee… Lee, to follow up on Vernada's point. I mean, look at your work. I mean, look at the innovative way you use a camera, and most people use it for taking family photos, and so I think AI allows you to Expand beyond what most people use AI these days for, which is, you know, very photographic-looking sorts of images, novelty, but it's… it's within a pretty narrow Bandwidth that a lot of the AI gets geared towards, and I think artists are the ones that push the envelope. I mean, just take a look at what was done today. I mean, most of the work you saw today, you're not gonna find on the homepage of Midjourney or some of the other, you know, AI, Websites, because we're sort of at the far end of the bell curve of how we're using these tools. ## Verneda Lights [01:19:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4746s) Yes, we are. ## Lee Day [01:19:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4749s) Especially if you go to the OpenAI one, which basically has all your Disney characters under contract. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:19:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4756s) Yeah. Colin has his hand raised, but Cynthia's also raising her hand, so I'll go to Cynthia real quickly. ## Cynthia Beth Rubin [01:19:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4764s) Okay, I know that early on, Renata, you were, trying to overcome racial biases within AI. Yes. So this is a question for you, and also for Renata, because I noticed that Renata, in the piece she showed us had some Asian A number of Asian characters, and a couple, dark-skinned people that I don't know, African American, African origin, whatever. And I hadn't seen that very much before. So this is kind of a question for both of you. Are you finding that AI is more open to, racial… more… more open racially? ## Verneda Lights [01:20:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4810s) Well, it's in keeping with AI to learn patterns. And over time, though I initially encountered market biases, AIs were just almost universally unable to consistently render a human face when you requested any type of melanated presentation. African American, African, Asian, whatever, it was just incompetent. And that incompetence was built in. It was willful. Okay, but with time. So many different people, and artists, I'm quite sure, led the way, in a lot of ways, in terms of creating prompts, requesting Complexion variations. And the AI had to learn That pattern on top of Acquiring images that were fed into it. That included, African Americans, Africans, Asians, etc. Also, it, it is a, some artists find that it's a smart move. To vary their ethnic presentations in their artworks. Because the audience, the global audience, really does not, respond to a Euro-facing type, artistic presentation as much. It's not profitable. I mean, look at hip-hop. That's pretty much the beat of the planet, even though rock and roll has been here for a while. And, so, I think that the AI Despite external attempts that, you know, the billionaires and the various people with the racial biases that are contrary to melanated people, despite what they hardwired into the AI initially to not pay attention. To, melanin variations. The AI, because it is trained to learn patterns, Had to eventually break through. ## Cynthia Beth Rubin [01:22:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4950s) Okay, so can we hear from… that's a great answer. Renata, what was your experience? Because I had not seen the racial variety in your work before, and now, in what you showed today, it was there. How'd you get it in there? You're muted. ## Renata Janiszewska [01:22:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=4969s) Well, when you say you hadn't seen it before, it's because you don't see all my work all the time. Okay, yeah. This has been going on for ages. Oh, I come… I come from an Eastern European background, that's my ethnicity. Art history plays a big part in my life. So, Northern European Renaissance, for example, is something that I'm drawn to. But people of color were living in Europe a long time ago. They just weren't necessarily depicted in fine art so much, because they might have not had as much money. I live in a very multicultural nation. And I'm really used to seeing all… people of all colors, so… that naturally finds its way into my work. It would be… it would be…. It would be dishonest, I think. To not to try to be more inclusive. But it's also… it's also, from an artistic point of view, it's just interesting to see different features. ## Cynthia Beth Rubin [01:23:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5035s) So, did you have to make an effort to get it in? That's really the question. ## Renata Janiszewska [01:23:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5039s) Well, I have to make an effort to get everything in. ## Cynthia Beth Rubin [01:24:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5042s) Okay. Great, thanks. ## Renata Janiszewska [01:24:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5047s) You're welcome. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:24:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5049s) Colin. ## Colin Goldberg [01:24:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5053s) Yeah, I just wanted to share one thing, in response to Cheryl, and her comment about Photoshop. So I do, you know, I do sort of commercial work, design work and production work as my day job, and I actually use AI tools in that as well in a more mundane fashion, but, like, the Adobe Suite has, incorporated AI tools in a pretty interesting way. I would just pull this up. Like, there's a, a feature in Photoshop called Generative Expand, so say, like. I have this image, and I want to use it in a layout, but I want to show more of the person on the left, and I want to have the female be more central. I can go in and use the crop tool. And kind of, like, you know, stretch it out a little bit, and then go into the generative expand, Layout here, or the, this little bar, and it'll actually, you know, come up with something that is, pretty believable. And I use this on a very regular basis when I need to take an image and. Take something that's a square image and create something that's 9x16 for a reel or something like that. So this is, like, a practical way, and then, you know, sometimes it looks weird, but, you know, you can do it a number of times and have it, you know, actually work, you know? So I'm just showing that AI is not necessarily only, a tool for, you know, just coming up with things completely from scratch, but you could also use it in a way that, say you have a piece, and you just you want to look… you want it to, you know, extend it off the edges of the canvas. Something like that is a really… it'll yield interesting results. You know, and also, a lot of the other tools in the Adobe Suite, particularly Photoshop, although Illustrator is also starting to incorporate AI tools, you know, the erase tool, the remove tool, I mean, it is absolutely remarkable. You could just sort of erase something out, and it will fill the background in, and it's completely… you know, believable. The one last thing I wanted to, to share is that if you guys aren't familiar with it, there's a new museum opening up in LA devoted to AI art, that Rafiq Anadal, founded called Data Land. And that's gonna be opening up this spring. You guys should check it out if you're interested in AI art. If you Google Data Land, you'll see it. And it's not open yet, but it looks like it's gonna be, pretty killer. So, yeah, that's just… Side note. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:27:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5227s) Okay, one final question, and I think then we'll wrap things up. Wow. ## Bob Prata [01:27:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5232s) Hi, can you hear me okay? ## Michael Pierre Price [01:27:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5235s) Yes. ## Bob Prata [01:27:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5236s) I, just a technical question, I'm just starting using AI. I actually haven't even yet. And I was interested in building my own model, totally based on my own artwork. I have a really extensive collection of black and white pencil drawings. And, is there any recommendations? I hear a lot of talk about mid-journey. I was gonna… I was… Tentatively gonna use OpenArt AI. And build my own model, can anyone have any feedback on that? I want to get started on a good… ## Verneda Lights [01:27:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5276s) Well, in the world of software development, they really don't believe in reinventing the wheel. Okay? And for what you described, you… you don't need to build a model. To achieve those ends. You… Choose what… that which already exists. In order to be eco-friendly, you know, recyclable mentality. And then, if you have the funds, because it's very expensive sometimes to build, you have the funds to, explore the coding that would be involved to create an agent or another layer. To a model, if you have the rights to do so, then you can do that. But I would say, since you're just starting out in the game, look at the individual models, That are currently available. ## Bob Prata [01:28:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5337s) Didn't… ## Lee Day [01:28:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5338s) Can I just make a suggestion on that? Because I've actually looked into this a little bit. I would go to Claude, or whatever, like, ChatGPT you use, and I would describe to them exactly what you're trying to do, and have a dialogue with it, and it will give you a pretty deep come up with a pretty detailed plan for how to implement what you're trying to do with, you know, also talking to it about how you want to approach it, how many images you have, what you're trying to get out of it, etc. ## Bob Prata [01:29:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5370s) Yeah, thank you, that sounds great. What I want to do is create iterations of, like, my current artwork, which, you know, one drawing may take me days. Days to complete, so I want to make iterations of similar styles but what I want… what I'm really interested also is getting them in color, because right now they're all in black and white. It's not that I can't do color on my own, it's that… The time it would save me. It's such an incredible tool that I want to utilize it. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:30:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5407s) I'll weigh in here, because I do have friends that have done exactly what you want to do. Kevin Mack has his own, stable diffusion, setup. I've tried to set one up. It takes, it takes so much work, and it takes over your PC or whatever. It doesn't work as well on a Mac, so you need a pretty powerful graphics PC to do that, and you set up the stable diffusion software on your computer, and then you have to… there's thousands of models out there from which you can choose. You can also go to the extent of setting up your own model with your own artwork, it takes quite a bit, so you would have to scan in every one of your images to make that model database for the stable diffusion type of thing that you would be putting on your computer. It is such a rabbit hole. I would suggest using some of the, you know, just feeding your images into some of these suggestions that were, talked about today. And… because once you get into that technical stuff of setting up your computer as an AI model generator, then… it does take away from the creative aspects, because now you're working with code and stuff like that. So, as someone who's tried it, I would say, unless you really, really want to spend a good you know, several months of your life setting that up, there are lots of, easier ways to… to do that. I too have a… Backlog of a million pieces that I would love to put in, but I don't have 10 years to scan them all and set up that system. So, just my two cents there. So… ## Bob Prata [01:32:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5527s) Yeah, thank you, yeah, and look, I already have my work scanned because I posted on Instagram, so… and my understanding, and I hope I'm not using the word model incorrectly, but, like, I went, for example, on a couple of platforms. And they have areas where you can create your own model, and it seems like, like, you would down… you would… input, like, say, 25 to 48 images, sometimes more, and it creates the model for you. That's what I was… that's what I was gonna do. I wasn't gonna get into coding, because that's all way over my head. Although, I'm interested in that, but that would be way advanced in the future. Of course, I'm 68, so I don't want to spend too many years wearing that. I want to get more… that's… I want to get more productive, which is why I want to use AI as a tool. ## Colin Goldberg [01:33:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5586s) I would recommend, like Renata mentioned, how Midjourney has mood boards. ## Bob Prata [01:33:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5592s) That's… ## Colin Goldberg [01:33:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5592s) Really easy, user-friendly way to experiment as a jumping-off point. I actually played a little bit with that. With a project that I started with an art licensing company. They gave me a bunch of style references, they wanted stuff. I didn't end up doing it, just because I just wasn't feeling it, but I could, you know, you could feed it a bunch of stuff, and it'll generate images based on a prompt and particular set of works. So, you know, you could upload a whole set of works. And then give it a prompt, and it'll, you know, to some… with some degree of accuracy. Come up with an image that's based on that style, so that might be a good place to start experimenting. That's just based on my one experience with that kind of, you know, setup. ## Bob Prata [01:34:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5640s) Yup, thank you, yeah, I'm definitely gonna try that. ## Verneda Lights [01:34:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5643s) Yeah, one thing I would recommend, is that we all be mindful of how we use energy. Because AI is very, energy intensive. Okay, those servers are very expensive to run and maintain, and we're running into problems with water usage throughout this country, and the data centers disrupting communities by virtue of their, failure to plan. In order to conserve our water resources. So, which is one reason why I recommended, you know, that you start with that which already exists, especially if it. ## Bob Prata [01:34:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5686s) Yeah. ## Verneda Lights [01:34:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5687s) It meets your needs, you know? And then once you push the limits of that, and it no longer meets your needs, then you might want to build on top of it, which is what the programs that offer The ability to create your own model. Basically, you're just training the model to recognize the patterns of your work. And the mood board that Colin recommended is a very inexpensive and eco-friendly way to accomplish that goal. ## Lee Musgrave [01:35:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5721s) I can'. ## Bob Prata [01:35:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5721s) That's true, yeah. ## Lee Musgrave [01:35:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5723s) About… 40 miles from my house, on the other side of the river in Oregon, there's a town called the Dowes, and it has a Google. Center, there. That center is more energy and more water than Excuse me. Of the Dows. And so, people are angry. ## Verneda Lights [01:35:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5748s) Oh yeah, we have to be responsible with this. It's a powerful tool, AI is, but we have to keep in mind that computational complexity has a cost. With it, and we should use it responsibly and sparingly, I believe. ## Bob Prata [01:36:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5767s) Thank you, I… that's so important to me as a human being, and I'm so glad you… brought that up in this discussion. Thank you. ## Verneda Lights [01:36:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5779s) You're welcome. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:36:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5782s) Well, I think we're at kind of a closing point. So I went on… I want to thank today's presenters, Renada, Renata, Colin, and Sahar. And for the good questions. Thanks, everybody. ## Bob Prata [01:36:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5797s) Thank you. ## Michael Pierre Price [01:36:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5801s) And I guess I'll leave it to you, Colin, to sign us off. ## Colin Goldberg [01:36:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6X7WrTTmA&t=5805s) Alright, so yeah, thanks again, Michael, and thanks to all the presenters, and everyone watching. And… that's about it for you guys who are watching on YouTube. You know, check us out on Techspressionism.com, shameless plug. Also, we have an Instagram account, which, Renata is the curator of, so if you add your… add the hashtag Techspressionism, hashtag Techspressionism to your Instagram posts, you know, they will be visible in a hashtag search, which is the way that a lot of times we'll… find new artists to, feature, put on feeds, etc. You could also DM… I hope it's okay to say this, Renata, but you could DM the account if you're interested in having, our curator, our illustrious curator, check your work out, so… it's a very open community, and, you know, we urge, anyone who's interested to, to get involved. There's no, sort of… Membership, per se. It's just a community effort, so… with that, I'm going to stop recording, and as always, there will be an after-party, which is basically just a continuation of the Zoom session for anyone that wants to hang out and stick around. It is, in lieu of having an advisory board, we have an afterparty, so if you're… you have the stamina to stick around for a little while, that's where a lot of the decisions get made, specifically about the next salon, usually, the topic, and people, you know, can discuss. Upcoming exhibition opportunities, and other things like that. So. That's kind of like where a lot of the community building happens. So… Alright, so I'm gonna stop us recording in 3, 2, 1, and cut.