(de)generative art at
tbdees.com

Years ago, something small went wrong in the programming of my body’s cells. Over time this tiny error in my code replicated and grew until it became tangible enough that it rerouted blood vessels, tugged at my skin from within, and fundamentally changed how my body functions. Earlier this year, while going through cancer treatment I was searching for ways I could make art that didn’t have huge physical demands. My search led me to Midjourney, an artificial intelligence (AI) driven image creation software.

This series is created like cancer. For each image I start with innocuous prompts designed to generate cute but ordinary animals (for example, “adorable baby duck”). I then let the AI generate images until it gives me something a little strange. With that I create variations trying to accentuate and grow the weird output. Sometimes it works and I can highlight the glitch, other times it reverts back to something normal and I’m forced to start over. I think of these creations as being analogous to the vanguard of genetic engineering. A lot of the output I get is perfectly fine, but some of it is the stuff of (adorable) nightmares. As the underlying technology gets better, there will be less and less errors. Maybe someday we’ll even be able to engineer ourselves to not glitch.

I view the process of only using innocuous prompts as a sort of intellectual honesty. Because I don’t use text prompts to generate oddities, the process can be rather time consuming. I could just ask for a dog with an ear that looks like a hand, but that would lose the serendipitous nature of the creations. Frankly, I never would’ve thought of asking for that in the first place.

In the future, as AI gets better, I believe that both getting the initial glitches and then pushing them to their limits will become more difficult – but for now, I hope my images make people smile (and just a tiny bit uncomfortable).

I’m currently based out of Hudson, NY.