The idea of combining the old and the new to make something novel is a concept that is gaining traction in the realm of machine-generated art while also raising questions about the future of art.
Generative art has been popping up on the social feeds featuring improbable and occasionally gruesome images created by an incomplete text prompt given to the art generator. These examples include “the Demogorgon from Stranger Things holding a basketball,” “plague doctor onlyfans,” and “archaeologists discovering a plastic chair.”
The hype behind text-to-image generation has gained mainstream attention this year. With the artificial intelligence company OpenAI announcing their image generate DALL-E 2, machine-generated art enthusiasts are excited about the possibilities of digital art. Similarly, Midjourney, another similar text-to-image generation software from the Midjourney Lab and Google’s version, Imagen has made this market all the more competitive and worth watching out for.
The latest influx of such images/works on social media is not nearly as impressive as the ones shown during the official releases of these generators. And, like in any case in the world of technology, if the software is of limited accessibility, open-source unofficial algorithms and software take their place in the public market. For instance, the Russian-language ruDALLE, and Disco Diffusion are examples of generators produced by programmers in their spare time, as a response to the delayed deployment of these algorithms by technology giants to the public.
The appeal of generative art comes from the unprecedented quality of the images that are produced at high speeds. This offers an artist the to experiment with any idea that pops up in their heads quickly and efficiently.
OpenAI, Google, and Midjourney are justified in waiting to unleash the potential of their creations before the full implications became more apparent. But waiting too long can also have a blowback with open-source programmers filling the void with simpler and inferior algorithms.
What we want to focus on is the growth of recombinant art through such technologies. The concept of lines of code to be able to produce stunning artworks in the nick of time, though has a series of unique and exciting pros, it also has some major cons that we feel must be remembered as we move forward into an era of both digital and physical art.
Firstly, generative art involves a concept known as “prompt engineering”, where an artist defines a sentence or a phrase that is best suited to explain the resulting piece of art. This facility encourages anyone to have a crack at expressing their creativity in minutes but it also shifts the importance of skill from being able to compose the right hue of color and brush strokes to be able to write a collection of words to create art. Following this realization, we understand the time artists spend their lifetime perfecting a certain style of painting that is unique to their philosophy and past. The nature of recombinant art denies this fact as it is easily capable of combining different art styles from its repository and creating new art always, due to the nature of permutations and combinations.
Yes, this opens a wide array of possibilities for individuals to find ways to express themselves through the styles of their favorite artists. Say, you want to have a uniquely bold style of Andy Warhol, through the facility of recombinant art, you can define this style by simply typing in the artist’s name and the text that defines your art. This helps everyone in finding an outlet to let their creativity out and share it through the beauty of programming.
Though there is a certain amount of reluctance to adopt these technologies the pros do not outweigh the cons, rather they stay in their places. The nature of these technologies can only aid in bettering the art community across the globe based on the way it is employed by digital or physical artists. We must imagine these technologies as tools that reflect humanity’s spirit of improving what already exists.
Recombinant Art is a movement dubbed by creative technologist and writer Bakz T. Future. The 21st century is a digital age, and art has recently joined the fray as it becomes digital and remains largely grounded in the physical history that has transpired from the beginning of history.
We see an interesting intersection of how these technologies enable exploration of creativity while at the same time remain grounded in the techniques and the philosophies of the artists of history.
At the end of the day, such technologies only allow a person to figure out if they are actually one.