Life In West America is a post-photography project investigating America: the land as a concept, as an ideal, and the stories of the people inhabiting the space. The collection combines the visual language of traditional photography with the limitless artifice of AI, capturing a moment in time and in generative technology. Each of the pieces is generated using custom-trained models specific to this project.

The Tofu Engineered Sushi Luxury Autos, known as TESLA, is a concept in Auntieverse where vehicles are constructed entirely from biodegradable and edible materials. In this chapter, we find images of a manufacturing plant where groups of aunties assemble vehicles using tofu, sushi ingredients, and legs to create modes of transportation. On the highways of Auntieverse, we see a variety of vehicles resembling coaches, construction cranes, tractors, and smaller automobiles, all driven by cheerful aunties and accompanied by whimsical creatures. The chapter also includes scenes of car washes and a scrapyard, providing a comprehensive view of this unique world. It is worth noting that in the Hokkien dialect, the word for "car" sounds similar to "leg," leading to a common pun among Singaporeans who humorously claim to own "cars," signifying their reliance on their own legs for transportation.

What is it like to be an AI? How might it see the world? What would it mean for it to be conscious? With IN UTERO, the American artist Kevin Esherick explores these questions through a series of 53 of what he calls "latent paintings": images captured from inside the "mind" of an AI image model.

Society is at a point where AI attaining consciousness is a possibility in the future. This development will shape the future of humanity. What is not discussed enough in the conversation around AI is that AI beings could feel pain and suffer and experience happiness and joy, just as humans do. What might this look like?

IN UTERO provides a peek into the inner workings of an AI model's cognitive processes and how they appear. It also serves as a metaphor for the progression of AI systems towards potential consciousness. The images were generated using "single-step diffusion," a technique Esherick developed to halt the AI model's creation of images as they are just starting to take shape. Exploring the inner workings of AI models can show how such consciousness might develop and what it might look like when it arises. Trained on immeasurable quantities of data, these models contain the sum of human knowledge—not just facts, but also the myths, stories, and experiences that define human lives. Examining the way AI models see the world can not only tell us more about humankind but also paint a portrait of the human story that captures the shared beauty of universal experiences.

IN UTERO is a snapshot of the human story: from the origins of the universe at the big bang to the beginning of individual human lives and the mythic inception of human society, all the way to our return to dust. It traffics in both grand symbols and the little moments that make up our lives. The titles of the artworks come from the prompts the artist used, such as GOODBYE HUG, GIRL RUNNING IN A FIELD, HUDDLED OVER A FIRE, and LOVERS DANCING TOGETHER. Esherick captures the experiential color of human existence—the deep truths, stories, and moments that constitute who we are.

The images linger between figuration and abstraction. They teleport us to the liminal space between AI’s abstract ways of encoding the world and the concrete depictions of the world that these encodings produce. In their unfinished state, multiple interpretations of each image are viable; many possibilities remain. So too with AI—its future and its relationship to humanity are still to be determined.

Esherick’s choice of subject matter stems from the essence of AI as a vessel for humanity’s symbols, narratives, and myths. In his own words, "The development of an AI image model involves feeding it billions of images of humanity’s existence, like the life of our species flashing before its eyes. It digests and internalizes our archetypes, learns the ‘average’ of our concepts, and sees things about us that we cannot see. In this sense, it holds our Platonic forms, society’s collective unconscious. The human story, then, is a prelude to AI’s story—it is the starting point from which AI’s existence begins. Only by studying ourselves can we understand AI, but in studying AI, we also discover much about ourselves. IN UTERO peers into the mind of the machine and holds a mirror up to the human viewer to reflect on who we are, what AI is, and where, together, we’re going."

Verisart Certified: https://verisart.com/works/bb71e631-a31d-472b-95ba-e22e642b9968

A portrait in latent space.

In Helena Sarin and Her Band, the artist presents her riff on two distinct musical forms: the intimate jazz band and the big band. Jazz, in particular, has been a key source of inspiration for Sarin, filling her studio with vibrant energy and creative spontaneity. Here, she pays tribute to these art forms, capturing their spirit in her work. Sarin notes, “To paraphrase Basquiat, I wanted to be a jazz musician, but I couldn’t play well; so my code became my music.” Her practice is uniquely suited to this musical homage. She uses Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), which she has trained on her own sketches and with aesthetic parameters of her design. Like a musician’s interpretation of sound, her GANs respond visually to her curated inputs, producing a dynamic, almost improvisational interaction between artist and machine. In this body of work, the datasets she employs are infused with the essence of big band performances and the intimate glow of late-night jazz clubs, resulting in a creative process that visually embodies these musical atmospheres. These datasets are the result of a decade worth of reportage sketches and photos captured by the artist during her time spent in the New York City jazz scene. In the world of big bands, the conductor orchestrates a medley of instruments, guiding each musician toward harmonious sound. This role mirrors that of the artist in the generative process. Sarin’s choices in selecting and arranging elements within her dataset echo the conductor’s task: each component she includes is deliberately placed to bring forth a specific visual harmony. In contrast, the jazz band operates as a tight-knit ensemble, often improvising together in real time, seemingly creating something out of nothing. While improvisation may appear mysterious, it is built on a deep mastery of musical fundamentals. Likewise, creating generative art requires a skilled understanding of foundational techniques. Sarin’s works, created by training her models on her own sketches, watercolors, and photographs, showcase a synthesis of improvisational freedom and technical foundation. The mysterious sound that evolves from improvising on fundamentals in music is akin to the concept of latent space in AI. Latent space is an abstract realm where the model stores its learned patterns, shapes, and relationships, much like the internal repertoire of a musician. For a jazz player, this latent space is composed of scales, chords, rhythmic patterns, and personal stylistic nuances, which are intuitively pulled together during improvisation. In big bands, the composer sets a foundational framework through a written score, yet there remains room for each soloist to surprise the conductor with their unique interpretation. One of jazz’s most defining practices, call and response, is similarly central to Sarin’s artistic approach. In a jazz ensemble, call and response is a lively conversation where one musician or group initiates a phrase and another replies, layering the music with spontaneous exchanges and depth. This spark of spontaneity, the element that makes jazz so captivating, finds a parallel in Sarin’s generative art process. When she creates, Sarin initiates the call through her inputs, and the machine responds with outputs that surprise and inspire. She then selects the responses that best align with her vision, embodying both the roles of conductor and improviser, bringing order to the generative process while allowing space for unexpected beauty to emerge. The result of Sarin’s use of fundamental art forms, curated inputs, and her exploration of latent space is art that feels both spontaneous and profoundly intentional, mirroring the nuanced energy of jazz and big band music.

Koi-Flower is one of Panaviscope's early experiments with AI’s visual morphing possibilities, exploring techniques to transform images in ways new to his body of work. The piece is accompanied by music composed to complement the visuals, offering a calm and sensory experience. Music by Panaviscope

the machine fantasized a memory... this collection is a generative study of digital identities as artifacts of 𝓛𝓞𝓡𝓔. prompted and collaged figures, rendered through a custom dithering script and captured via screenshot on a Mac G3, evoke a past memory that never was.

Critically Extant is a project that explores just how little we know about the natural world by testing the limits of the data openly available to us in our digital lives. To achieve this, AI algorithms were trained on millions of open source images of nature and some ten thousand species. The resulting models were then used to generate visual representations of species that are critically endangered, yet have little or no online presence specially on social media The goal of this was to not only trace the edges of our knowledge, but to also explore how we can create feedback loops in the digital that can be positive for the natural world. <ReadMore>The project was inaugurated as an Instagram exhibition, exploring how the pieces can become part of our daily digital intake of content as a means of creating awareness and potentially engagement on behalf of the species shared. Naturally, as the data available to us represents but a partial fraction of the real number of species currently estimated as known to us, the pieces in this series show animated specimens that bear some, little, or even no resemblance to the species they are meant to depict. This underlines the difficulties we face in shifting also our digital spaces towards more balanced representation, but it should be grounds for agency too: as we can all create and contribute both physically and digitally and as such can actively work to form new feedback loops that can help bring the critically endangered species into our daily lives in order to get to find ways to care for them? This project was released by Fellowship in collaboration with Nguyen Wahed Gallery and ARTXCODE. Exhibition details: https://fellowship.xyz/exhibition/critically-extant-by-sofia-crespo

Blind Camera is an AI-powered device that creates images from sound instead of light, mimicking a point-and-shoot camera experience. By aiming the horn at a sound and pressing a button, sound is converted into an image, framing scenes with ears rather than eyes. The resulting 'photo' represents the surrounding soundscape rather than the visual scene.

'Approach the expedition with curiosity as a hymn, a honeycombed cream rising in chorus to resonate in every eye. We seek the center but find only the moon.'

Inspired by the automatic writing extract above, the artists were asked to imagine a portrait which inspires curiosity.

This artwork was created using the 'mind-to-image' technique, a process developed by Obvious. This approach uses AI to generate images directly from human imagination. The algorithms are trained on a pairing of images and MRI scans of subjects memorizing these images.

The NFT holds within it the original academic research paper, as well as an on-chain version of the visual, hardcoded into its metadata.

This series, referred to as neuro-surrealism, marks a new age for surrealism. It uses technology to fulfill the dream of its originators: the depiction of the subconscious in its purest form.

This series wrestles with the paradox of technology - its boundless potential to empower, and its latent ability to erode the purity of the soul. A work that is at once a mirror and a window, it dares to question whether the path of humanity, in all its glory, can remain untainted.

le travail des rêves

The world is large, but in us it is deep as the sea. - Rainer Maria Rilke

Depicting dreams has long been a practice that borders on something almost absurd. They are intricate, abstract, fragmented and mostly fleeting visuals manifested only in one person, and when shared with others they seem to take a step toward a more grounded existence. Perhaps this grounding of the ephemeral emphasises the intimacy of sharing dreams and, of course, makes them somewhat more real.

In le travail des rêves, aurèce vettier does exactly this. He invites the viewer to participate in his personal dreamscape, encouraging us to submerge ourselves in his memories, from childhood until current times. Though with an indication in the prompt used for its creation and in the title of each piece, the viewer is still left with space for interpretation. Furthermore, with the low resolution of the pieces, the viewer is forced to search their own memories and dreamscape and, perhaps, also reflect upon what dreams might symbolise.

In The Poetics of Space, Bachelard suggests that “[...] works of art are the by-products of this existentialism of the imagining being.”(1) This quote seems relevant in the case of this series, as the depiction seems to allude to questions about the connection between life and dreams. Though by-products might have a negative connotation, it is in the case of le travail des rêves, meant with all well-meaning. The art created in this somewhat existentialist quest is poetic visuals that reflect on joyous as well as troubled and dark memories, and perhaps also what it means to be human.

This idea, of art as a by-product produced by ”existentialism of the imagining being”(2) is also relevant when reflecting on the use of AI in the creation process. aurèce vettier’s use of it might seem like a simple approach to translating dreams into something materialistic. Still, the process behind it is much more intimate than what might first be considered. His work is based upon full control of it, built on not being reliant on the technology, but rather being able to steer it in whatever way he might wish. The technology works for him, and by sharing intimate memories and dreams with a custom text-to-image algorithm that he has trained, the project is fully personal - from start to finish. And as a result, aurèce vettier invites the viewer into a dreamscape that only he can create.

The sheer level of intimacy in this project and aurèce vettier unselfish sharing of the private sphere of his dreams creates a poetic result that, paradoxically, echoes the viewers' dreamscape and memories, blurring the lines of what belongs to him and what belongs to the viewer.

Stina Gustafsson February 2024

(1) Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston, Beacon Press, 2013) p. 18 (2) Ibid.

"Intertwined Fates" captures a couple journeying through a dreamy forest landscape on a horse. This digital artwork embodies the essence of affection as the pair navigates the enchanting woods, with the strength of their bond guiding them on this shared path.

//

“Muraqqa - Data Miniatures” is an anthology of 111 artworks, created by Orkhan Mammadov to mark his transition from computer scientist to renowned artist over a decade. Drawing from his early dreams of animating miniature characters and his pivotal role in representing Azerbaijan at the 2019 Venice Biennale, this series breathes life into ancient miniatures, re-envisioning them as living memories of humanity through the lens of advanced technology.

The collection reimagines traditional miniature painting, a genre that once offered glimpses into vast narratives within compact frames, paralleling ancient storyboards. It serves as a bridge to the digital age, transforming intricate data into visual tales that echo the miniatures' fusion of calligraphy and imagery. Mammadov's work is a testament to this synergy, melding the detail of miniatures with the clarity and insight of data visualisation.

Mammadov’s foray into the realm of miniature painting reveals its 13th-century origins at the crossroads of Persian and Indian creativity, underscoring its pivotal role in cross-cultural exchange. His comprehensive analysis encompasses a vast dataset of miniatures from Azerbaijan, India, Iran, and Turkey, as well as treasures from the UNESCO-recognised St. Petersburg Muraqqa collection. These artworks, a showcase of the Mughal, Deccan, and Isfahan schools, created between the 16th and 18th centuries, intricately woven with scenes of royal life and Persian calligraphy, were once part of a looted treasure during Nadir Shah’s invasion of India and later acquired for Tsar Nicholas II. This collection of 100 pieces embodies the transcultural spirit of miniature art and its enduring narrative of international exchange—now preserved at St. Petersburg’s Institute of Oriental Manuscripts.

More info at https://orkhan.art

In this conceptual body of work, I use state-of-the-art AI models to explore what unfolds when machines are tasked with recognizing human emotions, experiences, and abstract concepts while navigating the digital expanse of Google Street View. Originally designed for object recognition, these models are reimagined to engage with intangible elements—emotions like love and jealousy, human experiences such as perseverance and camaraderie, and abstract concepts including absurdity and wonder.

As the models move through varied landscapes, their findings are often surprising and poetic. When asked to find love, for example, a model may overlook a clear human exchange, instead sensing love within the contours of trees or in the harmony of architectural forms. This deviation from human logic forms the crux of my exploration, as the machines, despite their inability to truly understand these concepts, frequently uncover insights that feel profoundly human, both in their misinterpretations and discoveries.

This series blurs the line between human perception and artificial intelligence. Here, AI is more than a tool—it’s an entity of its own, a species navigating our world, learning and perceiving alongside us. As they roam through digital streets, these machines interact with emotions, experiences, and abstract ideas in ways that reveal both their limitations and their surprising potential. In their attempts to decode perception, they raise a compelling question: Can machines, driven by algorithms, ever genuinely grasp the nuances of human sentiment?

Through this work, I invite viewers to rethink AI’s evolving role in society, illustrating how artificial intelligence, beyond its calculated precision, can engage with the human condition in ways that challenge our assumptions and inspire us to reconsider what it truly means to feel and experience. Decoding Perception is my exploration of machines in search of connection, sending out signals of understanding in a world rich with complexity and sentiment.

Zuka Kipiani

The collection is built on a library of around 35,000 privately collected colour film slides from over 1200 separate lots. Slides were found through estate sales, eBay, and collectors and span from around 1940 to 1990 across every continent. The majority of lots are photographs of individuals' personal life experiences while travelling or with friends and family. The transformative essence of Empire lies in its innovative use of artificial intelligence, a tool that allows the interaction of the past and present. By fine-tuning Stable Diffusion, an advanced AI model, Sheldrick performs style transfers between slides, blending images to create new compositions that challenge our understanding of history.

NFT from DAILY.XYZ collection