Monday 30 October 2023

October 2023 Summary

Between rantingprintmaking, figure drawings and AI Art, I kept very busy in October 2023.

NO SCUM ALLOWED
  • Apparently the "No Scum Allowed Bar" was conceived in the movie Young Guns

PRINT EXHIBITIONS


The biggest thing in October was the Desert Triangle Print Carpeta reception at the University of Arizona Art Museum in Tucson, on October 24, 2023:





The exhibition even got written up in Hyperallergic:





We started the month in Silver City going to the Southwest Print Fiesta 2023 -- October 6 and 7, 2023 -- where Manny showed one of my AI prints:




Southwest Print Fiesta 2023 -- SUMMARY


Ellie and I hung 88 prints on Monday, October 23rd,  before going to Tucson, for the "Deck the Walls" exhibition at the North Fourth Art Center in Albuquerque. They filled the walls with art for the last blow-out exhibition as the art center will be closing at the end of this year, 2023:




Potato Print Party

We had a potato print party at Ellie's house on October 21, 2023:

AI ART

Vanity lead me to  use Midjourney to blend my drawing with a drawing of Duerer's, and then further tweak it to add a javelina:

(plus javelina)


I generated a bunch of fake drawings in my style with Stability Matrix, on the supercomputer at Quelab:



LLaVA is an AI program that will describe an image after you upload it:


I generated a short AI video in Deforum, of figures based on my drawing style, using the supercomputer at Quelab:



I also enjoy animating my images with PIKA LABS on Discord:



I was really impressed in El Paso when Nefi Duran composed a musical piece from the model's last pose:



RANTS

I started the month with two rants:

Do all my drawings really look the same?

The last figure is AI

All of these figures were generated with AI
from my drawings


ECLIPSE

The sun went into an Annular Eclipse on October 14, 2023 in Albuquerque.  We went to Mountainair to see it:
Deborah checking out the annular eclipse
in Mountainair, New Mexico

Gonzalo Espinosa continues "Taller Sin Miedo" in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico:

"Taller Sin Miedo"
in Puerto Vallarta



SOFTWARE

Desert Triangle Reception at the University of Arizona Art Museum

We had a great reception for the Desert Triangle Print Carpeta on October 24, 2023 -- at the University of Arizona Art Museum in Tucson:

(L to R) Chelsea Farrar (curator), Olivia Miller (museum director)
Manuel Guerra and Karl Whitaker holding the pink bucket,
Joe Marshall and Linda Marie Garcia





Tuesday 24 October 2023

October 23, 2023

Drawn at Art Buddies in Albuquerque:

AI blend of my drawing below and Duerer





I blended my drawing 
and AI generated some good images



prompt: "in the style of Moebius"








This started as an AI blend
 of my above figure drawing with a Duerer,
and the result blended again with the same Duerer
(javelina added after the fact)














OTHER


HYPERALLERGIC

Our exhibition at the University of Arizona Art Museum -- the Desert Triangle Print Carpeta -- was written up in Hyperallergic:



Desert Triangle Panel Discussion

On October 25th they posted the Panel Discussion on YouTube, which we had on September 21st, 2023:



88 8x8s
(Albuquerque)

Ellie and I hung 88 prints, in 8x8 inch frames, at the North Fourth Art Center in Albuquerque. This is for the "Deck the Walls" exhibit, the last one before the art center closes for good:


88 prints
at the North Fourth Art Center


We hung five "cells":
  • Albuquerque artists who draw with us on Thursday nights
  • Other Albuquerque artists
  • Santa Fe and New Mexico artists
  • El Paso and the rest of the US artists
  • Mexican artists

The first "cell"
is of Albuquerque artists 
who draw with us


(mentioned in the lower right corner)


8x8 El Paso

Some of our prints are also part of the upcoming "8x8 Show I & II" in El Paso, November 30th, 2023, at Art Masters:



Art Masters is located at 6501 "C", N Mesa Street in El Paso:


TALLER SIN MIEDO
(Studio without Fear)

Gonzalo, Joshua and I started "Taller Sin Miedo" at the Sculpture Resource Center in Tucson:



Now the Sculpture Resource Center is no more; Gonzalo moved to Puerto Vallarta, and I moved to Albuquerque.  However the "Taller Sin Miedo" still exists, having relocated to Puerto Vallarta:


"Taller Sin Miedo"
in Puerto Vallarta


Gonzalo working with ceramics
at "Taller Sin Miedo" in Puerto Vallarta


"Taller Sin Miedo" is where the Desert Triangle Print Carpeta was born (currently showing at the University of Arizona Art Museum)...and perhaps "Taller Sin Miedo" survives online too, as something bigger than a physical studio...  


XEROCRAFT

When I'm in Tucson I need to visit Xerocraft Hackerspace again (like on October 25th)... I see my bald head on their "Open Hacks" web page:



Saturday 21 October 2023

PIKA LABS guided by Krrrl

I generated some AI images using AI Comic FactoryMidjourney and Stability Matrix (mixing them with some of my drawings, and also with photographs), and then animated the AI images in PIKA LABS -- to create another AI ANIMATION "COLLAGE":



Contemplating the new Contemporary Art









EbSynth

I then wondered if I could change the style of a PIKA LABS AI animation using EbSynth:

The original animation
generated in Pika Labs


I followed the YouTube tutorial for EbSynth (note that the "key" style image has to be the same pixel dimensions as the video frames):



I generated several different style variations with EbSynth, and made a video of all the variations:




This might be the most interesting variation:



AI  FRAME INTERPOLATION

I used AI "Frame Interpolation" in Runway ML on one of my old animated GIFs:




AI MOVIE TOOLS

These are short AI animations pieced together like a collage to make a "movie."  The next step is to make a longer "movie," perhaps by using these AI tools below:

GAUSSIAN SPLATTER SCENE

I experimented with the free Polycam 3D Gaussian Splattering trial -- the process worked, but my resulting scene was one big blur:


I created a 3D figure (210504__A.glb) and animation in Paint 3D, and then broke that down into individual frames using EzGifPolycam accepted those frames and created a Gaussian Splatter image (in "ply" format), but without the 3D figure I uploaded.  I think this is because the figure had no background for the software to reference.

The "ply" file did open in Blender:

Gaussian Splatter file in "ply" format
did open in Blender

With an Add On we might be able to make animation in Blender, so the 3D Gaussian Splatter could be useful for making a movie (Unreal Engine is probably better for this).

QUESTION

Is there anyway of altering a whole "movie" with AI, in the same way we can upload an image and alter it with text:

Google's new AI feature (SGE) answered the above question:



AI is developing so quickly that I doubt that anyone, even Hollywood, has a full grasp about what can be done. This has to be an opportunity for an outsider to slide in and make something significant... or not.

IDEA:  What if we constructed a scene in the real world, a scene that was first created in PIKA LABS, and then filmed that short scene.  Then we might collage the animation with the video to make something bigger  -- life imitates AI -- albeit still only a few seconds long.