6 hours agoLive or Memorex: AI & Photographic TruthThe tag line advertising and marketing jingle “Is it live or is it Memorex?” became popular in the early 1980s by the American company Memorex. It was used to describe the “live-like” audio quality of their cassette tapes that were used in 1970s & 1980s boom boxes. The image above…Deepfakes4 min readDeepfakes4 min read
Mar 23Revisionist Art & Recontextualizing Iconography Using AIAs an art student I was exposed to artworks that used popular iconography to make socio-political statements. For example, Renee Cox, whose photographs — frequently self-portraits — explores issues related to the representation and exploitation of Black bodies while seeking to create new positive imagery. …Revisionism4 min readRevisionism4 min read
Mar 14PI DayArt & AIPi is mathematical. Every March 14th people celebrate Pi Day—an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π — by eating pies and posting images of circles on Instagram: 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant figures of π. Pi speaks to a world without bounds because its digits…Pi Day3 min readPi Day3 min read
Mar 4Specular Reflection: The Rosie SeriesColor vs. light. Many of the past images I generated using AI are studies of color theory, which deals with color mixing and the visual effects of specific color combinations (ex. split complimentary colors). Lately, color has become a secondary element or last step in the process. Light, especially specularity…Specularity3 min readSpecularity3 min read
Feb 2ChatGPT Defines Techno-Vernacular Creativity & InnovationChatGPT — an OpenAI chatbot — generates text based on the input it is given… and it’s all the rage in scholarly circles. …Chatgpt3 min readChatgpt3 min read
Jan 24Revisiting ‘Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand’In Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand, Malcolm McCullough writes, In the case of craft, interpretations focus specifically on the way in which content takes form. With art, however, the relation of form and content varies constantly. Computing transforms this relation too: the same content (bits) may take many different…Craft4 min readCraft4 min read
Jan 10Compositing AI Tools: A PrimerThe text prompt I started with was an art term: sfumato. Sfumato comes from the Italian language and is derived from fumo (“smoke”, “fume”). I was thinking about its use in famous paintings such as da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” The painting gives an elusive and illusionistic rendering of the human…Midjourney3 min readMidjourney3 min read
Jan 2The Aura of AI-Generated ArtIn his 2004 essay “Why are Artists Poor?”, Hans Abbing writes, Walter Benjamin predicted that the technical reproduction of art would lead to a breaking of art’s spell (‘Entzauberung’). Art became less obscure, more accessible and thus less magical because of technical reproduction. … Benjamin’s prediction is not difficult to…Aura5 min readAura5 min read
Dec 26, 2022Afrofuturism 3.0 Revisited: 2015 to the PresentIn 2015 the book Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness was released and it examines the applicability of contemporary expressions of Afrofuturism, from several different points of view and disciplines of study. I wrote chapter two titled “Afrofuturism on Web 3.0”, which navigated technologies from the past, then present and…Afrofuturism3 min readAfrofuturism3 min read
Dec 16, 2022AI & Techno-Vernacular CreativityIn 2021, the MIT Press published my first full length book, Techno-Vernacular Creativity & Innovation. Artificial intelligence or AI is briefly mentioned through artists such as Stephanie Dinkins. Dinkins created a training model for an AI agent based on living oral histories and literature including Toni Morison’s Sula (1973) and…Reappropriation4 min readReappropriation4 min read
