Tales My Mother Told Me: My Thoughts on Resilience
Resilience is the ability to adapt, cope, and recover from adversity, trauma, significant stressors, and other difficult life experiences, allowing individuals to bounce back and continue moving forward, sometimes even growing stronger from the challenges faced. My late mother’s favorite story about me as a toddler takes place in a local park with a ‘super’ geometric climber dome. My mother told me I was determined to climb this dome without help and she let me do this because she didn’t want me to try when she wasn’t around. According to her, I was a chronic climber and risk taker as a child… especially when the adults were not looking. To her credit, my mother never discouraged this behavior that carried over into adulthood.
My mother told me other stories about my early years and many went the same way: I took action to achieve a goal and controlled the direction of my actions. This (self-determination) process involves a combination of skills, knowledge, and beliefs that allow for goal-directed, self-regulated, and autonomous behavior, influencing ones quality of life. On the dome I kept climbing and falling off but each time I got closer to the goal. I made adjustments after each fall, learning from failure. Eventually, I reached the top and I recall laying face down to look down at where I started. This memory was the inspiration for “Summit Girl” (top), an AI-generated portrait now on view at Juxtaposition Arts in North Minneapolis, MN.
Juxtaposition Arts or JXTA encourages young people to take classes and workshops, collaborate on community-wide projects, and train alongside professional artists whose works are exhibited at the art center. A few months ago, founder Roger Cummings reached out to see if we could work together on a project, using generative AI or GenAI as a pathway to community engagement and collaboration. JXTA staff told me that their apprentices are well aware of the debates about generative AI art, from environment to ethics. They wanted youths to learn more about how professional artists are using GenAI to support or enhance their creative practices. And there is a lot at stake in these real and virtual streets.
It’s not just the physical streets. Black folks now have to fight the civil rights fight on the virtual streets, in those algorithmic streets, in those internet streets. — W. Kamau Bell
Following the police killing of George Floyd, Minneapolis experienced extensive looting and violence as well as peaceful protests in opposition to police brutality. In response, organizations like JXTA worked to make the city better for residents, especially for historically underserved and underestimated people. Meanwhile, in the face of current events and ‘techno-racism’, I’ve been encouraging creative people from diverse backgrounds to move beyond being passive or interactive users of AI to become creators and collaborators. This past summer I taught a pre-college “Creative AI & Design” course for Cambridge, MA youth. Then, I went on break to work with JXTA staff and apprentices to create concepts for public art at Opportunity Crossing at 3030 Nicollet.
The Workshop
After visiting Opportunity Crossing I facilitated a 3-day workshop for JXTA apprentices. The workshop plan followed a process I set in motion through Techno-Vernacular Creativity aka TVC 2.0. This includes using materials to identify key elements/themes to place them in historical, cultural, material, or intellectual contexts (contextualizing); arrange the elements to create a new, unified whole (synthesizing); and remixing elements/themes (syncretizing). Discussing AI literacy was/is as important as using the tools. In a short time we covered these elements and themes. AI literacy encompasses knowing what AI is, its fundamental concepts, what it can and cannot do, and how to use it safely and ethically while considering issues like bias, privacy, and accountability. JXTA apprentices gained new knowledge about generative AI and how they can use it to make express themselves creativity, including enhancing traditional art practices.
JXTA workshop activities include:
Design cyphers — The cypher is an important element of hip-hop culture, providing a structure for sharing knowledge and information. The design cypher is a place for participants to demonstrate and practice their skills, gain new skills, as well as a place to enact self-definition and theorize one’s own existence in the presence of community.
Collaborative peer reviews — As an extension of the design cypher, the peer review is a process where participants discuss and evaluate concepts/ideas together, sometimes with professional artists, to reach a shared, consensus assessment. CPRs fosters teamwork, enabling reviewers to share insights, offer fresh perspectives, and work together.
The Exhibition
JXTA staff selected several existing AI-generated images for exhibition on site, in the gallery space and throughout the building. Curator Drew Peterson requested that I include some of the prompts I used to generate the images. This is a challenge for some of them because I used additional AI-based methods and tools. Take, for example, “Afro-Surrealist Carnival (series)” that was created using three different tools.
MidJourney — a text-to-image tool that uses text and image-based prompts to create images
Deep Dream Generator — a deep style tool that allows users to transform the visual style of an image by applying the artistic features of another image, such as a painting or artwork
Adobe Photoshop (Creative Suite) — a tool embedded with generative AI, including ‘Generative Fill’ or inpainting that uses AI to fill in or modify missing, damaged, or unwanted areas of an image with new content
While “Summit Girl” was created solely using MidJourney, others were not. I use whichever tools are needed to provide the output I need to create the work. Generative AI provides new ways to create art but it does not replace human artists. Another misconception is that GenAI (or just AI) will replace human jobs. A recent study based on an analysis of official labor market data and tech industry stats finds little evidence that AI tools are putting people out of work. Rather, the rise of AI across many sectors is requiring people to gain new skills. These new skills do not replace the old ones. Having artistic and cultural knowledge improves GenAI output.
The Future
What I really like about your results is that they don’t just look like the usual automatic output, they’re better and they show the artist’s hand in making them fully realized, even though the elements of the algorithms are still visible. — Aaron Hertzmann
AI-based art can inspire people who are responding to artists’ purposes and intentions. My intention for using GenAI to make art is ‘multi-pronged’. Part of it has to do with addressing representation (or the lack or it) in the emerging GenAI art space. Transdisciplinary artist Stephanie Dinkins cautions against sitting back while companies develop AI tools and platforms that harm historically marginalized groups.
While visiting JXTA I saw teenagers engaging with the pieces as they were being installed. During the show’s opening, a mother and two children entered the lobby/gallery to see the show. One of the children, a girl, said that she loved “Summit Girl” because the girl in the image looked like her. The image, which represents self-determination, resonates with the community’s key themes: resilience is about bouncing back and continuing to move forward. The last phase of my JXTA residency is designing a public mural to be installed at Opportunity Crossing in the coming weeks or months. The new building was constructed in the footprint of a structure that was destroyed during the 2020 uprising. For many, this location is expected to become a site of growth and resurrection.