Making GenAI Art: A Year in Review
The year 2024 marks the eighth year I’ve been making images using generative AI tools. That’s right: 8 years. I discovered ‘Deep Style’ aka neural style transfer in 2016 and created my first AI-generated images to demonstrate the possibilities of the emerging technology and image generation process for the students enrolled in my AP Computer Science Principles course. Fast forward to 2024 when I’m still using Deep Dream Generator when the situation calls for it but mainly use MidJourney because of the quality of the output. The colors and textures, as well as the diversity of subject matter keeps me engaged… daily.
The first of the year was interesting in that I was exploring how to generate images based on my colored pastel sketches. In this way, the process felt even more collaborative than before. This output felt more authentic and expressive. I was leaning away from imagery that was hyperrealistic and polished and developing a different aesthetic. Soon, this new approach would catch a certain Oscar-winning costume designer’s attention.
Several of my AI-generated portraits pay homage to people whose works have impacted me positively in some way. This includes author Zora Neale Hurston who portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. Artist Faith Ringgold passed away in April and I posted a portrait on social media that was noticed by an art museum director. Ringgold was best known for her story quilts and I kept this in mind when prompting MidJourney.
Eventually, I expanded the portrait using MidJourney’s “Pan” feature and Adobe Photoshop’s “Generative Expand” option. Later this year I scaled the image up and installed by the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA) on the exterior wall of a brownstone in downtown Brooklyn, New York. This wall faces MoCADA’s new Ubuntu Garden at the intersection of Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene Place and Fulton Street. This is the second one of my GenAI portraits that was put on display by MoCADA in the same location. The Greg Tate portrait came down in 2023.
My “Afro Surrealist Carnival” series was on view at the Ulrich Art Museum in Wichita, KS. The title of the show was Dream Machine: Fantasy, Surreality, and Play and it was featured in a local newspaper with the curator saying:
Afro-surrealism is of the very present moment. And so she’s making the point, that, what could be more (timely) than AI, she said. She didn’t create this to … masquerade as another medium, she made it very proudly as this ‘I used AI as a tool to create the image that I wanted to convey.’
There are obviously very unethical applications of AI, and that’s not what this is, Reinert said. This is AI art that is conceptually about AI art … the fact that it is AI is built into the concept of the piece.
Afro-Surrealism is an artistic and literary movement that explores the surreal aspects of the African American experience through dream-like realities. D. Scot Miller shares that the inspiration for this work is Amiri Baraka who wrote about “the Black aesthetic in its actual contemporary and lived life.” This is the kind of aesthetic I’m aiming for when using generative AI tools, as a way to tap into the world of latent space.
I feel fortunate to have my GenAI artwork in places where people can go and see it (i.e., as a mural, in a museum). My AI-generated portrait of Fannie Lou Hamer was featured by White Snake Projects in the world premiere of “Is This America?”, an opera that tells the story of the Mississippi activist who galvanized Black voter registration in her home state despite overwhelming odds. Walking into the Strand Theater in Boston, MA I was struck by the different ways my work was displayed.
Finally, as I briefly mentioned above, I was hired to create GenAI images as concept art for a well-known costume designer. This was my first experience working as a concept artist and collaborating with someone who recognized the potential of generative AI to assist in her craft/work. Throughout our time working together on the project everything was kept a secret. I read the “Untitled” script and used MidJourney, Deep Dream Generator, and Photoshop to come up with ideas based on the script and feedback from Ruth (and the director). I uploaded archival photos and my sketches to help guide the tools and this work/process was extended into the summer when production wrapped.
Generative AI tools, in the hands of artists and designers, become part of an evolving creative process that involves both artificial and human input. What I learned this year was that this process can involve other people, other creatives who share a similar vision. Being out in the public, AI art takes on a new purpose, one that creates opportunities for interaction between GenAI tools, artists/designers, and their audiences, often with feedback that audience members provide. I’m looking forward to what is to come in 2025, with at least two opportunities to exhibit my work coming up soon. In the meantime, I will continue sharing my progress.