concept cover for my 3rd Album Refilwe generated from a picture of Ed Privat
I was really reluctant 10 years ago when I started producing music, to use technology to my advantage, I was considering myself a "purist".
Oh boy, was I wrong.
Autotune, aka any voice correction softwares (like Melodyne) were here to stay, a bit like photoshop, electric cars and Wifi. The world has changed so quickly, and if you stay on the sideline for too long, it gets kind of boring.
I don't want to close my mind anymore, after all I've been using autotune on my 2 last albums, I admit that I was wrong about it, and I will now try to be more open minded about what I don't understand. It's all about what music make you feel, and people are thriving for perfection through art.
Does that mean I am embracing transhumanism and will very soon have an antenna up my bottom?
Hell no, but I do realize that the mediums we are using to create are evolving, and it would be tragic not to take advantage of it.
I am one of those that have always wondered if one day we could be able to record our dreams, and play it as a movie to others.
Well, Ai generated art, is for me the closest I'll ever be to that dream.
I come from an Art background, I studied art in highschool as I wanted to be a comic book artist at the time, my dad is also a painter, and I spent countless hours following him in museums.
I remember the division in the class room between those that could draw, and those that couldn't.
Both were attending the same Art class as we were the "Art curiculum" of the highschool, which was a patchwork of misfits, from punks, aspiring artists, musicians, to school dropouts, and everything in between.
Those that could draw often made fun of those that couldn't (I often instigated the rift), and those that could't draw were compensating their lack of "skills" with amazing concepts, political critiques, and a freedom that we, the one that could draw, could never really experience.
I learnt a lot about modern art, Dubuffet, Burren, Basquiat, Picasso, the Dada movement, the futuristic movement, I learnt about Art, with a big A. It took me a long time to understand that concept of Art, as I was coming from a morte traditional art background.
That shift that we are experiencing right now in art, I can only compare it to the art revolution the XXth century has witnessed around the 1920s. Artist were breaking the shackles of traditionalism, and experiencing art in ways we spent a 100 years to uunderstand.
I've stopped dreaming about art, a long time ago. AI has just rekindled that passion, and ever since I've been dabbing into the technology, my mind has already reach places that I didn't know existed.
It's been a few years that I imagined a concept for a comic book about an MMA fighter, that is trying to find his family during the Zombie Apocalypse, it's called DEAD PUNCH, and it's gonna be awesome.
Well at least on paper, that idea was great, but I couldn't really "visualize" where my ideas were going.
Midjourney and Nightcafe studio are the 2 generators that I often use, they have really helped me through mapping out the process, and even made it possible for me to conceptualize pretty much anything.
I can tomorrow hire a drawer, that will help me finish my concept! Freaking amazing...
What does it mean for the future, of everything?
I don't know, it's a tough question to answer, and I have to admit that it's a scary thought.
Taking a jab at Klaus Schwab using Nightcafe. I called this one "Eat Bugs, Be Happy"
But the elite in charge of your reality, they have already decided that AI will dominate our existence, BlackRock is making gazillions dollars on predicting the market and probably shaping it, jobs are already gone by the hundreds daily, it's already here...
So I might embrace part of it, just because it's really, really fun.
Enjoying art for what it is, that's something I completely forgot.
Again, the technology is really new, for those that are on the fence, just give it a try. See what you can come up with.
I keep on scrolling through Instagram, and every piece of ai art created that I encounter is just a blast to look at, I am enjoying it as much as if it was done by an artist, so in some ways, it makes it real?
It's still an open question, and maybe in 5 years people will say "Do you remember when everyone went crazy with AI art? It really was the beginning of the end".
But think about it, that's probably what impressionists painters felt when they saw the first cubist painting, or even the first time someone used a modern paint brush compared to the old ones, it's just a natural process of "progress".
I am just very grateful to be a part of this generation, and witness what's about to come, because it will transcend us in ways we do not understand yet.
For now, it's a lot of trials and errors. The result you get from the prompt isn't always "perfect", but you'll know when you hit the spot, when the picture "just makes sense".
For example, here is what happened when I prompted "Acoustic guitar player Ed Privat at the top of a mountain, the sun is setting, on the trees, wide angle, anime style":
Look at this guy:
Hahaha, obviously, you won't always get a good result, it will take some level of discomfort (very much like when drawing), but again, I am just having such a blast with it, I couldn't care what people think. Art is art, I gave up trying to make sense of it.
At the end of the day, it's really up to what you make of it. It reminds me of the possibilites you have playing an open sandbox game, like Minecraft. You are in charge of the story, and the limits of the game are your own creative limitations.
After years of not drawing, I actually also got back into it recently, and learned that you can still improve your "skills", even after 30.
But this sort of perfection, it takes a long time to achieve, and ain't nobody got time for thiiiiiiis...
All the Art in this post was created by @edprivat, using midjourney, and nightcafestudio.
Cheers!
What I am working on:
