Sometimes it begins with a simple thought, or a moment of intrigue.
Thats how Organics was born.
I liked the idea that nature, is the source of the most original generative art. We are surrounded by it, inspired by it, influenced by it whether we know it or not.
“I remember looking at victorian pressed flower collections at the British Museum.”
The idea…
For me as an artist tools and technology, digital, or physical are just tools. None are good, bad or evil. You can’t really describe AI based art, in any different mindset to digital photography, charcoal, paint, acrylics. They are just the evolutions of the elements of art making.
For Organics, I had in mind that there would be a contact grid of 10x8, editions or flavours of the ‘plants’. The throw back to the 10x8 size as a photographer appealed to my sense of humour. I also wanted to have a broad collection of images that I could reward collectors of other works with. An airdrop. Art needs to be shared and surfaced to gain meaning for it.
the studio process…
The background canvas is a combination of a charged (washed) canvas painted in the studio and then scanned, composited with a number of photographed textures.
This builds the base, each flower is then generated (having created a hand or image sketch as input) using an AI Generative programme. In this case 'DiscoDiffusion’ was used. For each individual series of images, typically a set of 100 or so were produced. Taking a few days to generate.
These ‘generated’ flowers were then selected from, merged, painted and hand artworked in photoshop to provide the aesthetic of the collection.
As I reflect on the completed collection, there is an interesting and clear progression between each of the editions as process and tool familiarity increased.
One of the many things from being a photographer is that I have a desire that the art produced can be digitally and physically made, printed to look good in the world.
I think these images look and hang well together as a run or collection on a wall.