I am crazer (aka Chad Rullman).
I have been a filmmaker and creative designer for over two decades.
Over the past several months, I have been working with various Ai design tools and exploring new methods of storytelling. The following is a story I had begun writing as a screenplay, but decided to bring to life as a collection of art pieces.
Signals from the Future
This art collection features a series of images captured by a drone roving the Earth, decades into our future. They are sent to us today, without context or associated data. We’re left to draw conclusions based solely on that which we see.
Befuddled technicians receive the mysterious images from a future version of their own Ai creation that has evolved beyond it’s current state, and it seems far beyond our future selves.
The complex Ai system, named “Jason” by the founders to honor their own company JCN Enterprises, consists of a drone, a series of satellites, and a powerful Ai entity that autonomously controls the entire system.
The project was developed to survey the moons of Jupiter with far more sophistication, capabilities, and autonomy than that of the Mars rover missions. With the arrival of these images, it seems the launch to Jupiter never materialized, and the drone carries out its mission roving the wastelands of a post-apocalyptic Earth.
It makes no logical sense to the techs, but it is undeniable that the images are being sent by Jason in the future to Jason today. Their working assumption is that the once the drone was set loose to roam free, the Ai had to problem-solve its way around the destruction of the modern world. With no home base to receive the data, the Ai figured out a way to transmit the collected images to itself in our time.
The drone was programmed to traverse harsh environments and seek out any signs of life and interesting features in the landscapes. These images are certainly that. They include obliterated cityscapes, mysterious solitary survivors, rugged looking tribes who react as if threatened by the high-tech drone, terrifying totems, and dangerous looking clans. No context is given, but one thing is certain… The Future is Bleak.
A fine art NFT Collection
Signals from the Future consists of seventeen 1/1 art pieces on the Foundation Marketplace. Before finalizing the collection, the Superchief Gallery in Los Angeles selected an image from this series to be included in their group show on 9/9/22.
The piece K9 Unit 2047 was seen on their gallery’s amazing digital array, and can be collected on the Tezos blockchain in their Objkt collection from that show.
Please visit Foundation to see the full collection and to acquire any of these unique art pieces.
Final Thoughts regarding Ai Design Tools
Unfortunately, I’ve recently seen naysayers attempting to discredit Ai art tools or argue that anything created with these tools is somehow “not art”. To me this point of view is uninformed and foolish. I’ve been a filmmaker, jewelry designer, and CAD/CAM professional for over 20 years. Creative outlets are my livelihood. It is silly to me that everything I’ve done for decades is considered legitimate artistic expression, but somehow the tools I’ve begun to explore these past months suddenly make me an imposter.
Ai tools are TOOLS. There are some easy-access apps that allow anybody to type in a few words to instruct the creation of an image, but the tools used by myself and my peers are complex and take days/weeks/months of time commitment to master, and often the Ai tools are just the base level of a larger workflow. That’s not to say the more user friendly apps don’t have a place! Photoshop and graphic arts programs made art and design accessible to many people who did not have the talent or skills to paint with paint brushes, draw with drafting tools, or create with any number of traditional methods. Those programs are also tools.
Similarly, the Ai tools can be learned and used by anybody willing to put in the time, but IMO they are best utilized by artists from other mediums who have a deeper and richer artistic vocabulary to direct the Ai. When creating art with Ai, the magic is in the prompting. The better one can learn to communicate to the Ai entities with their words, the better the results will be. This, of course, is balanced with a series of nobs and switches to help guide and fine-tune the results with numeric controls, similar to controls seen in any art or design programs.
As a filmmaker, the workflow for creating an Ai movie is nearly identical to creating a traditional film… I envision and outline a story. I communicate that story to a cast/crew, who then performs as directed. The recorded video clips of those performances are then trimmed and arranged in Post, where FX and sound design accompaniments are added, and then the complete composition is color timed and finalized for exhibition.
This process is the same. Whether I’m creating a traditional film with actors and crew, shot on film or creating an Ai film with the Ai entities performing the scenes and sounds needed to arrange the final composition in post… it is the same workflow.
An important distinction, however:
The films I create with traditional methods cannot be made with Ai.
The films I create with Ai CANNOT be made with traditional methods!
It is an entirely new medium, and I fully embrace it.
These Ai tools have given a tremendous amount of freedom to myself and many creatives around the world. They allow me to explore ideas and concepts that I simply cannot touch in the film industry with all it’s restrictions, gate keepers, bean counters, trends, formats, and budgetary restrictions.
I’m very proud of this Signals from the Future collection, and love that there are outlets for such projects. My advice for anybody hearing noise regarding Ai art tools is this: Like what you like. Art is art.
We don’t tell painters which brushes they can or can’t use. Or photographers which cameras, lenses, formats, or even tech is legit or not. On and on and on with any medium. For those who’ve never used the Ai art tools… the Ai is not sentient. Ai creates Nothing on its own. They are tools directed by humans. A human envisions an idea, communicates that idea to the Ai, then painstakingly refines that communication through a long series of trials and errors until they can get the results they need. And often then, the Ai outputs are further adjusted in other programs, with other techniques. It’s creating with your mind and words rather than moving a mouse or paintbrush by hand.
Many artists around the world are excited to be learning and using these amazing new tools, and they’re creating new mediums of artistic expression and new ways for people to collect the work of their favorite artists and creators. Ai art tools are here to stay. And I am proud to consider myself an Ai Artist.
c-