Thursday, 30 April 2026

APRIL SUMMARY -- 2026

In April I continued to push AI to generate both FAKE Sculptures and FAKE Exhibitions -- based on my REAL drawings:

Constructed with AI

SAN FRANCISCO
FAKE Exhibition
at the deceased San Francisco Art Institute

***

MEXICO CITY
April 13, 2026 -- Mexico City
FAKE Exhibition
in the center of Mexico City in the the Zocalo

***

NEW YORK
April 20, 2026 -- Subway
FAKE Exhibition of drawings
in the New York City Subway

***

ALBUQUERQUE
April 22, 2026 -- Ice Sculptures
FAKE Exhibition of ice sculptures
in a burnt out building in Albuquerque

  • FAKE ice sculptures placed in a REAL burnt out building next to the old Quelab 2.0 in Albuquerque
***

ARIZONA
April 15, 2026 -- Glass Studio
FAKE Glass Building Studio
around Tucson

***

HOUSTON
April 11, 2026 -- Wire Sculpture
FAKE Exhibition of Wire Sculptures

  • FAKE. How I imagine a random gallery in Houston
*****

AUGMENTED REALITY
ALBUQUERQUE

The Ultimate Goal is to place my FAKE Sculptures in the Albuquerque Museum Sculpture Garden using AUGMENTED REALITY:

ALBUQUERQUE MUSEUM SCULPTURE GARDEN FANTASY
The sculpture on the left is REAL --
while the three sculptures on the right are FAKE


I even managed to construct ANIMATIONS in Augmented Reality -- however they can be viewed on Android phones, and NOT on iPhones:

More RIGGING and MOTION -- MESHY
View in
  AUGMENTED REALITY


SANTA FE
AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
I went to the AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE talk/exhibition
in Santa Fe on April 26, 2026



DRAWINGS


April 8, 2026

April 8, 2026

April 10, 2026 -- PORTRAIT
Portrait drawn with charcoal pencil

April 11, 2026 -- Wire Sculpture

April 11, 2026 -- Wire Sculpture

April 11, 2026 -- Wire Sculpture

April 11, 2026 -- Wire Sculpture

April 11, 2026 -- Wire Sculpture

April 15, 2026 -- Glass Studio

April 15, 2026 -- Glass Studio

April 20, 2026 -- Subway

April 29, 2026 -- San Francisco Art Institute

April 29, 2026 -- San Francisco Art Institute

April 8, 2026
How much of my drawing
survives after the AI transformation?


My line drawings often look better in DOTTED LINES -- after alter them with AI using KREA Realtime with the prompt: "dotted lines":

DOTTED LINES
"dotted lines" can help pump up
my weak pencil drawings
Download: Dotted8.SVG


April 10, 2026 -- PORTRAIT
Gary and Barbara
teasing me at the Friday Night Faces drawing group



PRINTMAKING

April 2026 was mostly a slow printmaking month for me. HOWEVER the ABQ PRINT CRAWL was a big deal.  With Tamarind Institute and Takach Press in town, Albuquerque should be a bigger printmaking town -- and the print crawl was a big step in the right direction:
 
ABQ PRINT CRAWL
Kristen Sarette runs the Chroma Printmaking Residency

ABQ PRINT CRAWL
I had my "print passport" stamped
at every printmaking shop

RISOLANA made a risograph print from one of my drawings -- and obviously I need an image with thicker lines and better contrast:

ABQ PRINT CRAWL
April 15, 2026 -- Glass Studio
My drawing did not lend itself
to a risograph print


I laser cut one of Virgil's images into a metal mesh silk screen, and it came out great. However I did a bad job making a quick test print:

Snake Silk Screen with the Laser Cutter at QUELAB
Virgil's snake image
laser cut really well into silk screen


MARK WILLIAMS had a great print show at Sidetrack Brewing Company:

April 3, 2026 -- ABQ ARTWALK
Mark Williams relief print
of the Sidetrack Brewing Company building

April 3, 2026 -- ABQ ARTWALK
I bought another relief printed t-shirt
with designs by Anna Maraziti

April 11, 2026 -- Wire Sculpture
Francisco Delgado sold a print
at the SECRET GALLERY in Albuquerque

I am awaiting a new EXQUISITE TESSELLATION linocut from AnaMaria Samaniego:


AnaMaria Samaniego



AI and AR ART

ULTIMATE ART GOAL

My current obsession is to exhibit my FAKE sculptures at the Albuquerque Museum Sculpture Garden using AUGEMENTED REALITY. 

Outcropping in DALL-E 2
An earlier vision of my sculpture
in the Albuquerque Museum Sculpture Garden


WORKFLOW

I'm not quite there yet, but the WORKFLOW pipeline is coming along with a little help from AI:
  • I first use KREA Realtime to transform a lot of my drawings into 2D "sculptural" images
  • MESHY seems to be the best program to turn those 2D images into 3D objects
  • <model-viewer> works really well to make "Free Form" Augmented Reality from GLB objects
    • However I have to change a line of code -- as noted in AR REPAIR -- for the Augmented Reality to work
  • PICTARIZE uses "Targets" to conjure and project the AR objects.  This is necessary to place the sculptures in specific places.  Moreover this software can use multiple "Targets" to conjure multiple "assets/objects."
    • GOT STUCK -- MINDAR is basically the same as PICTARIZE, but does not host the AR experience on a server.  The challenge then is to figure out how to scrape the code and host it on a server of my choice (GitHub should work)

PROCESS 

FIRST STEP: I used AI in KREA Realtime to convert my drawings into 2D sculptural images, prompting KREA Realtime "sculpture" in the description:

April 8, 2026
An example of my
real-drawing-to-FAKE-sculpture


SECOND STEP:  2D to 3D -- I convert the AI "sculptural" image into a GLB object using the 3D options in -- KREA or MESHY (or MakerLab or Hunyuan 3D-2  in ComfyUI). 

EXTRA STEP: In the image below I asked Nano Banana/FLOW to convert the knelling "sculptural" figure into a T-Pose before turning it into a 3D file in MESHY -- making it easier to animate:
The T-Pose allows me to "rig" and animate the 3D file in MESHY, MIXAMO or MESH2MOTION.


AR -- Pictarize
A 3D Augmented Reality plane
in front of a 2D print

AR -- Pictarize
"Target" for 3D plane when viewed in
AUGMENTED REALITY

Using PICTARIZE:
  • Can deliver several different AR experiences from several different "Targets" -- after the viewer clicks ONLY ONE URL.
  • Works with 3D animated images with an Android phone -- but NOT with an iPhone
  • Works with 2D "Target" images, like museum signs

FOURTH STEP:  I want to host the AR program on my own server, or the server at Quelab -- using MINDAR instead of PICTARIZE -- to create and host the AR with "Targets."

I can host the AR code made with <model-viewer> (after I change a line of code).  However the AR object is NOT placed in a specific place in the Albuquerque Museum Sculpture Garden  -- but rather materializes at random locations, on any close flat horizonal surface.

To anchor an AR object to a specific spot with "Targets," I used MINDAR (made by the same person who made PICTARIZE, HiuKim Yuen), and followed the tutorial. 


 
DOUBLE FAIL

Sculpture as a "Target" did not work:

I also tried to use a sculpture as a "Target" with the AR programs, however that did not work.  A sculpture can look different from four different angles -- which might be used as four different "Targets."  However a sculpture can also vary from even slight different viewing angles, so I think that is why the sculpture "Targets" did not work.

Could not host MINDAR AR:

Moreover I could not yet host the MINDAR AR on my own server yet.  Even the static sculpture image below did not deliver the AR sculpture from my link on SWCP:

The AR figure does not emerge from this "Target"
 after going to this MINDAR link:
AUGMENTED REALITY

I am almost -- but not quite -- there!
Hologram and AR -- 2022
Imagining my Augmented Reality sculptures
in front of the ART VAULT Gallery in Santa Fe


ANIMATED AUGMENTED REALITY

I can also ANIMATE in Augmented Reality -- though the augmented animations can only be viewed on an Android device, as the iPhone uses a proprietary AR system:

RIGGING in 3D
Rigging and animating a 3D jaguar
 which can be put into AR


BONES vs BALLS
Two Different Types of Animations

APPARENTLY the GLB Animations have "balls," while the FBX animations have "bones". With "bones" one can adjust and alter the "rigged" 3D animations in BLENDER.  This does not seem possible with the "ball" animations:

More RIGGING and MOTION -- MESHY
The "rigged" T-pose 3D file (left)
ready to be animated as an FBX --
vs the GLB animation with balls (on the right)

  • We were also trying to make 3D animations to import into RAYLIB -- however that video game program only accepts limited basic animations

*****

We did some video projection mapping at Quelab 
from an online program -- Map Club


See-Through breaks down 2D anime images into separate parts:

(Hugging Space) See-Through-Demo
This AI figure, based on my digital drawing,
was broken down into parts with See-Through


 LINKS

3D Objects
download in GLB format
(directory)

AUGMENTED REALITY


VECTOR FILES

SOFTWARE

3D
OTHER
ALGORAVES


I got back on Midjourney again on April 10th, after they previously bounced my payment again. They released their newest model 8.1 on April 30th on the regular website (though "8.1 Alpha" was available earlier on a special testing website on April 14th).  One still has to go through the "personalization" survey before they will let you use the new 8.1 model.

The newest 8.1 model does look better in the daily showcase examples -- but again, the outputs all converge to a certain aesthetic.  Now the results leans towards a Kate Moss heroin chic, having evolved from a Tim Burton aesthetic in earlier AI models.  In contrast, I want to use AI to generate unique artistic styles, instead of just the preferred consensus style.



MORE

Lindy's Diner COLLAPSED in downtown Albuquerque on April 27, 2026:

Lindy's Diner collapsed on April 27, 2026

April 13, 2026 -- Mexico City
They demolished the building
 across from my house on April 12th --
photo from April 30th

The GIZMO ARTS building with its new sign in downtown Albuquerque, that refers to the old Dinosaur that I helped Dennis Liberty make:

Dino in the GIZMO sign --
beginning of a new era

April 3, 2026 -- ABQ ARTWALK
Mauro de la Tierra of San Antonio,
curated the Texas exhibition at the Secret Gallery 


April 6, 2026

April 20, 2026

April 28, 2026
ICONIK Lena Street, Santa Fe
(Yaupon tea is a coffee native to the USA
so I would like to try it)


PREVIOUS SUMMARIES

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