August 2023 was a big month for both PRINTMAKING and AI ART.
PRINTMAKING
The new classic photo of the Albuquerque printmakers:
Southwest Print Fiesta Print Exchange 2023
I combined both printmaking and AI Art by laser engraving an image I generated with Leonardo.AI, and printing an edition of it, for the Southwest Print Fiesta Print Exchange 2023:
When one scans his smart phone over my print, a 3D AR tapir materializes in space (on the phone), without downloading an app. However this AR (Augmented Reality) is a huge nosebleed to actually use:
PRINTERS PLANET Festival
We participated in the PRINTERS PLANET Festival in Santa Fe on August 13, 2023:
- PHIL SPACE -- Printers Planet
- PRINT, BANG, POW -- Exhibition Opening at PHIL SPACE
- Printmakers -- Exhibiting at PHIL SPACE
- The PRINTERS PLANET Vendor Market -- Santa Fe, August 13, 2023
- The Print Vendors -- PRINTERS PLANETS, August 13,
- 2023TORTILLA PRESS Printing -- during the PRINTERS PLANET
- Collaborations -- at PRINTERS PLANET
We met both Rex Culp and Caryn Crimmel at the PRINTERS PLANET vendor market, and later Henry Morales pulled new perfect prints for them in his studio in Albuquerque:
I delivered those prints to the artists in Santa Fe during a drawing session at Argos Studio/Gallery on August 29th, 2023, where I also put up a pop-up print show:
The portable Laserpecker 2 quickly and safely cut EVA foam, which we then used to print on the Tortilla Press:
The initial idea was to laser-cut and print live in Santa Fe for the PRINTERS PLANET -- however we decided against that as there was a chance that the laser cutter would tip over and injure someone.
Julianna Kirwin wheat pasted this print outside on the wall of her studio in Albuquerque:
AI ART
AI ART (Artificial Intelligence Art) has really escalated recently, and I got access to the powerful new programs starting last August 2022, a whole year ago. I tried to come to grip with all this progress by making a blog post:
- Blog post: A Year of AI ART Innovation
We started at the beginning of the month when Grant lent his computer with a powerful RTX graphics card to Quelab on August 2nd. A week later it was running Stable Diffusion, after Adam installed and tweaked Automatic 1111.
We downloaded a lot of AI models from CIVITAI, and also the AI model trained on my drawings in Open Art -- model_20221213233657.ckpt (2 GB).
- They have to be uploaded to the "models/Stable-diffusion" folder.
There is also a way to train AI models for use in Stable Diffusion -- LoRAs
One of my ultimate goals it to have AI "correct" or influence my figure drawing in real time, sort of like what Scott Eaton does:
AI ANIMATION
I discovered PIKA LABS for making animations using AI, and used it to make animations of my Midjourney AI creations (I had early access since July 21st, but was too busy to get to it before August). I made two YouTube videos of the best results:
I took a step further and made a longer AI video in Deforum, using Stable Diffusion in Automatic 1111
on the beefy computer that Grant lent us at Quelab, based on my drawings:
InPainting
2D-to-3D AI
On August 3rd, 2023 I got access to a 2D-to-3D program -- CSM (Common Sense Machines) -- that worked in Discord:
AI QR Codes
Augmented Reality
We figured out how to deliver AR (Augmented Reality) without downloading an app, but the whole process was a huge nosebleed.
PROGRAMS
- Looking Gloves app -- online app to turn videos into holograms
- Luna NeRF -- online app to turn Luna NeRF3D files into holograms
- <model-viewer> WebAR
- WASM-AR
- CIVITAI -- download AI models
- How to train LORAs using Kohya GUI
- AR Hero (starting at $50 a month)
- Podcast interview with Frank Rose on Hello Print Friend
- Kiri app-- for making 3D objects from a smart phone
Ben Harrison took this picture