I asked an AI art app to show me America
Using artificial intelligence to generate American history and symbols
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Hello, in this week’s issue we’ll look at…
I asked an AI art app to show me America
This Elijah Cummings portrait is headed to the U.S. Capitol
The most unhinged Confederate statue in America just came down
Banksy’s famous “Love is in the Air” is being split into 10,000 NFTs
I asked an AI art app to show me America
The new artificial intelligence art app Dream allows users to create algorithmically generated images with the click of a button, and I’m totally addicted. I’ve been using the app to see how AI recreates American symbols and history, like the above stars-and-stripes designs made using the term “United States of America.”
To use the app, you enter a term, pick one of 11 art styles (including steampunk, synth wave, or fantasy art), and tap “create.” The images appear in seconds, as if assembled from the average of all Google Image searches for the term, though WOMBO, the Canadian AI company that created the app, doesn’t say what exactly it uses to create the images.
The results are abstract, but gesture to the real thing, like the images I rendered using “Declaration of Independence” and “Statue of Liberty.”
The key to the app is experimentation and repetition to find the best image recipes. More specific terms can sometimes create better images, like the images of the March on Washington, which got more recognizable the more words I added. Using “Pearl Harbor” created a horrifying blend of the memorial and images from the attack, which occurred on this day in 1941.
One of the funnest categories to generate images for is historic figures and celebrities. Generating “George Washington” using the festive filter created images of our first president in the snow, while “Abe Lincoln” showed Lincoln’s stovepipe hat against a rock-like background I assume came from all the images of the Lincoln Memorial and Mount Rushmore.
I even tried to recreate presidential campaign logos, and the results were portraits of the former POTUSes as half-men, half-brands, like former President Barack Obama as a mash-up of Sol Sender’s O logo and Shepard Fairey’s Hope, or former President Donald Trump’s hair on a glitched-out word mark.
AI has improved since Google’s “demon puppies” days, and Dream raises questions about what the future of art might look like if anyone can make gorgeous pieces with the press of a button.
“You don’t need a paint brush, pencil, or any art supplies to make beautiful artwork, all you need is an idea,” promises WOMBO.
You can try the app here.
This Elijah Cummings portrait is headed to the U.S. Capitol
The U.S. Capitol is getting a portrait of the late Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., next year that was painted by an artist from his hometown.
Baltimore artist Jerrell Gibbs, a 33-year-old Maryland Institute College of Art graduate, was commissioned to paint Cummings after being selected for a shortlist of local artists by Baltimore Museum of Art curators, according to the New York Times. Gibbs submitted a concept painting for the portrait based on the cover of Cummings’ 2020 book We’re Better Than This taken by photographer Justin T. Gellerson, and added in American and Maryland flags and lion statue to the background. The flags and lion didn’t make it to the final portrait, though.
“I realized what I wanted to capture was his voice, his presence, his disposition, his strength, and everything else was just taking away from him,” Gibbs told the Times.
Cummings’ portrait will be just the eighth portrait of a Black lawmaker in the Capitol, according to the Architect of the Capitol.
The most unhinged Confederate statue in America just came down
You knew exactly which statue I was talking about, didn’t you?
After 23 years, this absolutely insane statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the first KKK Grand Wizard, has finally come down today in Nashville. The 25-foot statue is on private land owned by businessman Bill Dorris, who died last November, and it was removed by the executor of his will, the Battle of Nashville Trust, which literally called the statue “ugly” in a press release, according to local reports.
“I’m so excited,” Tennessee state Sen. Heidi Campbell (D) told USA Today. “This is great news. It’s just so hurtful to people, not to mention it’s heinously ugly.”
Earlier this year a bust of Forrest was removed from the Tennessee State Capitol. Dolly Parton fans wanted it replaced with a statue of the singer, but Parton pushed back, saying in a statement, “Given all that is going on in the world, I don’t think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time.” What about now, Dolly?
In other Confederate monument news, the statue of Robert E. Lee that was at the center of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 will be melted down and turned into public art, the Charlottesville City Council said today.
Banksy’s famous “Love is in the Air” is being split into 10,000 NFTs
If buying an original Banksy is out of your budget, maybe you can try for a digital piece of one.
For about $1,500, you can own part of the anonymous British street artist’s famous “Love is in the Air,” which shows a masked man chucking a bouquet of flowers like a Molotov cocktail. It’s being split into 10,000 “particles” that will be sold as NFTs in January 2022 by the NFT platform Particle.
“I always wanted to own art, even when I had absolutely no money — I wished I could have at least a tiny stake in the paintings that I liked,” Particle co-founder Loïc Gouzer said in a statement.
To prevent anyone from potentially owning the whole work, which Particle bought IRL at auction earlier this year for $12.9 million, the organization said it will keep 1% of the NFTs.
Is this the future or art collecting, or is it totally insane?
Now you know
The most popular emoji for the third year in a row is the face with tears of joy emoji, according to data collected by the Unicode Consortium. It accounted for 5% of all emoji use in 2021.
Here’s the full top ten: 😂 ❤️ 🤣 👍 😭 🙏 😘 🥰 😍 😊
ICYMI, I wrote about Spotify’s 2021 Wrapped visual branding. You can read the full story here.
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