From the ‘Metaverse’ to Latent Space: Exploring Style Reference
Fourteen years ago, I proposed to create an homage to Afrofuturism in Second Life or SL, an online, virtual 3D world populated by users who appear in-world as virtual 3D avatars. Back then, real world companies like Dell and IBM had simulations (virtual spaces) in SL and the latter granted artists residencies. Resident artistshad free virtual land and infinite building resources. To the uninitiated SL was like a video game but for us it was like teleporting into the future.
In 2021, it had been reported that there were still some 64.7 million active users on Second Life, with Web Tribunal then stating that in 2023 there was a daily average of 200,000 users spanning 200 countries [figures differ per reporting outlet]. — Rachel Douglass
IBM gave me a virtual plot of land, a curator, and a ‘gallery’ opening. I could do whatever I wanted on theme in that space and I did. People (as avatars) were visiting and teleporting around the simulation for over three months. It was an exciting time full of creativity and experimentation but, for me, that moment is long gone. I’m in a different moment now. We’re at the cusp of a generative AI revolution.
Recently, after looking back at the images that were captured in 2010, I wondered what would happen if I used the images as style references in Midjourney. Style references influence the style or aesthetic of images generated by Midjourney. In 2010, I created several areas in the exhibition for people to explore sub-themes such as cybism, a term coined by Joseph Nechvatal:
This blending of the computational virtual with the analog indicates the subsequent emergence of a new cybrid topological cognitive-vision that I have called the ‘viractual’: the space of connection betwixt the computed virtual and the uncomputed corporeal (actual) world that merge in Cybism.
In 2010, I traveled across the U.S. to see Rammellzee’s Battle Station art studio that was resurrected as part of the Art in the Streets exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles. In an subsequent essay, I wrote about theorist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “style,” as a kind of ontology or metaphysics of presence to describe the artist’s encounter with the world that is accounted for in a distorted way by science. From this, I coined urban metaphysics to describe the “artistic, cultural production translated from material spaces to virtual, alternate, and augmented reality game layers on top of a dystopic world.”
For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. “Alternate Futures: Afrofuturist Multiverses & Beyond” in Second Life was the result of months, weeks, and hours of immersion and making things in virtual 3D space. The 2010 SL exhibition or simulation was also a reflection of the research I was doing at the time, at the beginning of my PhD studies at Georgia Tech. Years later, I became immersed in the latent space of generative AI… and spent eight years exploring and experimenting. I uploaded some of my SL “Alternate Futures” images for use as style references in Midjourney.
With this new images I move from virtual (SL) to latent space (AI), which refers to a lower-dimensional space in which high-dimensional data is embedded. Latent space captures the underlying structure or features of the data, and is typically learned by a machine learning model, such as the one used in Midjourney. For example, in generative AI art, a model might learn a latent space in which similar images are close together.
Based on this experiment, I’d argue that GenAI tools and processes such as Midjourney’s style reference option can capture the style or ontology (spirit of a moment), then translate this style into a new visual language through prompting. The new images reveal the relationship between theoretical or philosophical notions of style, technology/science, and the artist’s intention. Like 14 years before, I’m documenting the aspects of this development as it reaches the mainstream (it’s not just a prompt).
The notion of black art being futuristic is no longer just a [remnant] of the funk-crazed, pro-black, free-love, 70’s era… The future is indeed NOW! Gaskins work is one of many very obvious examples of this. Some of the most intriguing musical artists are completely enthralled with this theme. A few that come to mind, uh… Lil Wayne, Kid Cudi, Lupe Fiasco, Andre 3000, Janelle Monae, B.O.B. etc… —Blank.Bare.Clean
If you want to see the ‘machinima’ clip of “Alternate Futures” click HERE.