Between meat and machine: experiments in AI art
As text-to-image AI excites and enrages the world, the 105 cryptoart collective* calmly ponders the joys of using AI to make art.
Text-to-image AI has hit the collective imagination big time since companies like Midjourney and DALL-E opened to the public last year. Servers are grinding away with the storm of activity, and social media feeds are clogged with images claiming to interpret our thoughts via words.
The buzz is equal only to the angry denunciation: this usually happens when a critical mass of people suddenly get access to a paradigm-shifting tool. People from all walks of life — musicians, sculptors, data scientists, teachers, truck drivers! — are at it. And why shouldn’t they be? Everyone needs an outlet for creative expression. Meanwhile, established traditional artists are (somewhat understandably) outraged that their styles have been scraped unceremoniously and nonconsensually into the communal electric brain.
As experimental digital artists, we’re here to add to the conversation, not point fingers. Most of us have, to some degree, already been using AI tools in our work for a number of years. We’re an inquisitive bunch, so of course we’re gonna tinker with the new toy. We thought that instead of joining the…
