Radical Hope Blooms
It was at least 2 years ago when I digitized a loose collection of my botanical abstract paintings in all kinds of traditional media, and used them for training an artificial intelligence model in Playform. I’ve worked with these images off and on, never really clear on what their outcome would be. Recently, I selected some generations from Playform and blended them in Midjourney, loved what was happening, and then finished them up.
Radical Hope works this way - a trust that a future goodness will exist, despite not knowing how we get to it. 🖤✨
I selected the options available to print these on with a few things in mind - my favorite papers, the acrylic blocks and prints that I’m obsessed with, and some other prints that are more affordable. If you like this series and want to get a print or a few (they look so so good in a grouping!) let me know if I can help you pick out the best options for you.
REPRESENTATIONS
I’ve been working with AI art tools for a few years now, and while I was met with misunderstanding and fear sometimes, now I’m met with it MOST of the time. Even if people want to understand, now they have to UNLEARN and overcome what the media and misinformed audiences have planted into their brains. To be honest, it surprised me when I was met with fear and apprehension about what I was doing - training an artificial intelligence model on a body of my work, and working with the results - because I was absolutely delighted by it! It was so reflective, it fit right into my practice, bringing my knowledge about art therapy, mindfulness, connection, energy… all together. It felt therapeutic (from actually studying to be an art therapist and counselor, and from being a person with C-PTSD, actually in therapy). How could everyone get it so wrong?
I saw the Terminator films too! But I have also realized that I’m an early adopter, I’m someone who gets excited about ideas, and who is generally interested in changing the world to make it a better place. I also strongly identify with the concept of radical hope! I got really down about people being so hateful this year - if you didn’t know, the internet can be awful…
People fear what they don’t understand.
And this backlash has happened before in art history, with impressionism, dada, pop-art, the camera, the digital camera, photoshop, digital art… and now AI, which is probably the biggest change art historically, that most of us have been alive for.
So I really tried to listen, and what I kept hearing was the fear. Not only were people kind of afraid of AI becoming sentient and taking over the world, but they were also very afraid it would cause artists to lose their jobs, it would take over and kill art and creativity, and it would degrade the value of art. Everyone also seems to think all this creative AI was made up by big tech bros with an evil agenda to make money, and completely misunderstand how any of the technology actually works.
What I’ve heard about problems with AI are really systemic issues and total misunderstanding.
Which is why I chose to do the REPRESENTATIONS collaborative project for Taking. Up. Space. this year. It’s so important that people understand how this stuff works, and how to use it, because it’s here, and it’s happening, and you all need to be part of it! How else can you influence its direction?
This project has its own tab on my website, and will be virtually exhibited during May/June of 2023. Click Here to visit the page and learn more.
/describe
There’s a new feature in Midjourney, called Describe. You upload a photo and give the bot the /describe command. It gives you 4 descriptions the uploaded image. I’d played around with it with some images I had saved while testing the new rating system and voting on images from the new version (version 5). It was pretty cool to get descriptions about the art, especially because it links to any artists it mentions. It’s a neat way to explore styles and come up with new prompt mixes. I uploaded my own art as well, and it didn’t turn up artists I thought it might, and turned up some that haven’t influenced my work, but that I could see visual similarities in.
You can test out these new prompts by clicking the 1, 2, 3, or 4 buttons below, that correlate with the prompts above.
For testing these new features, there are places within the community where you can chat about them, give feedback, etc. Of course, someone uploaded a selfie, and the results were quite funny. It made me wonder… and I ended up quite enjoying results of my own 😂
The results were ephemeral, so they didn’t stay around and I didn’t realize it to get screen shots, but I was excited to see the terms “nerdcore” and “health goth” (I’m not sure what that is, but it sounds appropriate), as well as “apron with hair” and “distinctive nose” …. that’s right, all my Jones nose fam out there, it calls it “distinctive”!
But I wonder what “teethcore” is, and what “in the style of focus on joints/connections” even means?
AI is SO weird, and I love that…
Please enjoy these alternate versions of me, generated with all the weirdness that is a health goth, teethcore, dinopunk, socially minded, genderless, extremely gendered, deconstructive, light hearted, master of ink, cripplepunk, humanistic empathy, smilecore, photo taken with provia, woman with purple hair and a distinctive nose…
And, as for the links to artists:
It’s a super cool feature, because I am a nerd who loves art and art history, and one of the first things I geeked out about with AI text-to-image stuff was how much interest is being created in art history, and making it so accessible to people it wasn’t accessible or interesting for before! EVERYONE LEARN ART THINGS!
I wonder if other traditional artists have tried this out with their own work, and what results they got about artistic influences? If you use Midjourney, have you tried out /describe yet?
We have enough.
Expressions of Radical Hope: “We Have Enough”
Every week, I listen in to Midjourney Office Hours. I find so much of it fascinating, and I take notes to update my learning collective people to fill them in on changes, new features, and philosophy. There is a channel on the Midjourney Discord for the “daily theme” - you can choose to get notified when this theme changes or not, but it’s people in the same channel making art on the same topic. Often, this daily theme changes to reflect something discussed in office hours - like robot squid. I usually include some of these images with the update to the learning collective. This week it wasn’t really related, and I felt inspired by all the topics of discussion in general and made some abstract painting images. I try to prompt shapes, colors, styles, and materials I actually use.
I also used combinations of these ideas: new computer science, art history, biodiversity, responsibility, exploration, community, infinite compute power, radical hope, a beautiful future, post-scarcity, and monkeys looking for bananas in new places. (😂 It's always a good time!)
After making these images, I also used the /blend feature to really get something I was feeling. I took this image into Photoshop and used the neural filter Super-Zoom to upscale. Next up, I opened the upscaled image in Adobe Fresco to get painting - the live brushes are really lovely. If you’re a traditional artist working with AI, someone who has painted in Photoshop forever, or a new artist starting with AI-generated images and learning to paint digitally, definitely check it out.
I’m loving the tools that Midjourney has for making art, but also the community. So many acknowledgments of systemic issues and how we can have a better future. So much awareness that we have enough, for everyone. If I could see this community as a sea of people, I imagine many of them have these sparks of radical hope glowing within them… (Now there’s another thing for me to go prompt) 🖤✨
Dispelling Misinformation
I started using AI in my art practice a few years ago. I came across an article about Playform, and joined their artist studio. I had no idea how much I would love it, I was moving towards a glimmer of something catching the light, to see what it was. It felt reflective and magical, and it fit right into my work.
My affections towards technology are at least partially genetic. When I look at the familial lineup of mechanics, tinkerers, technology enthusiasts, information lovers, and wonder seekers, I shouldn’t be surprised. Many of the people close to me weren’t afraid of technology or people or ideas. And I mention this because it did surprise me when people reacted with fear and suspicion about my use of artificial intelligence in my art. (this was even before 2022 and the text-to-image cultural phenomenon)
As of now, everyone has pretty much heard SOMETHING about creative AI tools - but what they’ve heard is mostly misinformation and clickbaity opinion pieces aimed at getting a reaction. As a trained professional artist with a master’s degree, and with education in art therapy, art history, everything studio art, fine art, design and photography. Traditional media and new media, analog, digital, philosophy of art, ethics… and decades of experience, I’m absolutely qualified to speak on this.
I feel like I’m shouting facts into the wind sometimes, but then someone listens in and gets it, and it’s AWESOME. Because these tools are full of wonder, they are great for exploration, reflection, and I believe they have an immense capacity for healing and moving us forward.
One of the things I’m shouting - creative AI tools don’t “steal” other artists’ work and implement them into a kind of collage. That’s not how the AI tools work at all.
To explain in a relatable manner how they do work, I want you to imagine an art student, going with their class, to a museum, to study impressionist paintings. They look, they make sketches, they study them to figure out what makes them impressionist paintings, how the paintings were made, what they were made with, when they were made… they learn the concepts of what makes up impressionist paintings. Now, all of those students leave the museum and go to a painting studio, where they’re told to paint something in the style of an impressionist painting. Do they pull out paintings and copy them? Do they look at photographs of paintings and copy them? Or do they draw upon the concepts that they learned in order to make choices about color, composition, materials, etc.? When they reference these concepts, are they infringing upon some artist’s rights, living or deceased? No.
Another example - If you handed a group of people all some crayons and asked them to draw an apple, they could probably do it. Some might be red, some green, some more round, or some with spots, but everyone understands the concept of an apple. No one draws a bird or even another fruit. Those things are not part of the concept of “apple”, and the concept of an apple is so well trained in our minds that we don’t need an apple to be present to draw one.
Training isn’t stealing, and the original pieces of information that were studied are no longer present after training.
REPRESENTATIONS
As part of the @thrivetogethernetwork, and the Taking. Up. Space. global grassroots initiative, #takingupspace2023 I’m seeking submissions for a collaborative project, set to debut in May. This project is called “Representations” and the intent is to educate and encourage womxn to take up space and affect the future at the intersection of art and technology. All of the collective work will be used to train an artificial intelligence model, which will be used to generate a new body of work reflecting the collective. I’ll be sharing the process of creation through live sessions and videos, and the final body of work will be available as free-to-collect NFTs.
Call for art ends: February 26th, 11:59pm EST
A COLLABORATIVE PROJECT ENCOURAGING WOMXN TO TAKE UP SPACE AND AFFECT THE FUTURE AT THE INTERSECTION OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY
As part of the Thrive Together Network and the Taking. Up. Space. global grassroots initiative #takingupspace2023 I’m seeking submissions for a collaborative project, set to debut in May. This project is called “Representations” and the intent is to educate and encourage womxn to take up space and affect the future at the intersection of art and technology. All of the collective work will be used to train an artificial intelligence model, which will be used to generate a new body of work reflecting the collective. I’ll be sharing the creation process through live sessions and videos, and the final body of work will be available as free-to-collect NFTs.
Eligibility: Project participation is open to all women-identifying and non-binary artists. No knowledge of NFTs, Cryptocurrency, or artificial intelligence (AI) is necessary to participate!
Submissions:
Work must be submitted as a JPG or PNG file. One artwork is to be submitted by each participant, please select something that you feel represents your individual perspective or artistic style.
ON::VIEW Revue
CELEBRATING THE ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE OF 2022
On display: January 13th - February 18th, 2023
Reception: Friday, February 3rd from 5 - 9PM
From Sulfur Studios:
Sulfur Studios is pleased to present ON::View Revue, our Annual Exhibition featuring Artists-in-Residence from the past year. 2022 was a record year for the ON::View Residency Program, bringing artists from around the world to Savannah thanks to the new 5th Dimension Apartment just blocks from the studio.
We welcomed conceptual artist Jon Field from England; printmaker, illustrator and book artist Kazumi Wilds from Japan; rising star painter Tiara Unique Francois from Dallas; Cuban-born conceptual artist Carlos Estevez from Miami. Timothy Harding of Fort Worth, TX challenged traditional conceptions of painting and sculpture with his site-specific painting in the round, and Sue Carrie Drummond of Jackson, MS developed a pop-up artist book focused on issues of domesticity and gender. Artists engaged with the public like never before – from Stephanie Barber’s poetic video dialogues filmed with participants all over the city, to Field’s site-specific merzbau inviting collaborators of all ages. Savannah local Gabrielle Torres took on a giant weaving alive with invasive plants and interpersonal histories, and nomadic artists Monica Jane Frisell & Adam Scher captured Savannahians through storytelling and portraits developed in their mobile darkroom, The Nomadic Photo Ark. From Kazumi Wilds’ centuries-old suminagashi paper-marbling techniques to Jen Palmer’s cutting-edge collaborations with artificial intelligence, ON::View Revue brings together a diverse range of thoughtful, impactful work by each artist made within the past year, as well as providing opportunities for deeper learning through artist talks, studio visits and field trips with students of all ages from schools across Savannah.
ON::VIEW Residency Finale
I’m so grateful for having been able to spend the past month in residence ON::VIEW at Sulfur Studios! Connecting with people, sharing my process, and how I use artificial intelligence in my work has been a great experience. Everyone comes at this with a different perspective, so I’ve gotten a lot of practice talking about the work and bringing people into my process from where they are.
During the residency, I held open studio hours, inviting people in to participate by painting with me. Participants were given the option of learning a little about how waves are physiologically calming, and creating a waveform painting, or doing a meditative prompt about body awareness and creating an intuitive abstract painting. With 30+ paintings in each series, the works were digitized and used to train two separate artificial intelligence models. These models then generate more work, that is a combination of everything it learned from that dataset. I comb through thousands of resulting images, and work with them further to create a final collection of images and video clips.
Here are some of the intuitive abstract results:
Here are some of the waveform series results:
It was cool to see people come back in for the finale reveal that had worked on the project with me, or checked up on its progress over time. I really liked having all the work hung from the walls as it built up, and still on display with the video pieces being shown on screens in the same space. It really gave a sense of the entire project.
The month flew by! I was too engaged in conversation all evening to get photos with people in them, so here’s one last shot of the studio before I moved out.
There is an NFT to collect for free from the project, and I’ll be sharing more from it going forward. You can collect those here: https://jenpalmerart.cent.co
I’ll also be making more prints available from this work, make sure you’re subscribed to get updates when those become available.
Thanks! 🖤
The Artist & The AI
This is a presentation adapted from a talk I gave during my residency at Sulfur Studios last month, a little about me, my work, and how I came to include AI in my creative process.
( Fast Evolving Tech Disclaimer: The data in the presentation was up to date when made, but could be different at the time of reading this)
In Residence…
I’m liking the cyclical rhythm that the Thrive Together Network is creating. Previously, in the Red Tent, we talked a lot about these things, how the seasons affect us, and how we can use that information to our benefit. I have needed more of this in my life! The entire community just came off of a general sabbatical and into planning for the virtual residency, which started or starts for most of us this week. Coincidentally, I was offered the opportunity to be in residence at Sulfur Studios, pretty much the same as the virtual residency - I’ll get to check in with the TTN community the whole time☺ For the virtual residency, I just figured in all the other things I’m also working on during this time - like the storm drain awareness painting project with the city, reading, and keeping up with my research and applications. So I get an extra layer of accountability (Hello, Obligers), and support 🖤
The ON::View Artist Residency Program at Sulfur Studios interested me when I heard about it, because I was seeking opportunities to work in a more public setting, with community, and for this, the whole point is that it’s ON VIEW. I’m thrilled to have the support of Playform going into this as well, so I can share my methods and do more demonstrations of the process. Read more about the ON::View Residency below, subscribe to my newsletter, and follow on the socials if you don’t already 🖤
“What are the possibilities for NFT’s beyond Bored Apes and Pudgy Penguins? Will artificial intelligence turn on us - their human creators - and create a dystopian future of Terminator cyborgs controlled by Elon Musk and Skynet? Jen Palmer may have an answer to these important questions!
Jen Palmer moves beyond the tired stereotypes of NFT’s and AI (artificial intelligence) to explore the possibilities that this nascent technology holds for the intrepid artist. Palmer combines meditative reflection, traditional media and technology in her art practice. During her Residency, she will be working with mixed media and inviting the public to participate using simple meditative prompts as a guide. The works created will become part of a dataset of images to train AI. From that output, Palmer will develop a set of images and create short videos that will be shared through projection on-location in the Residency space, and as freely collected NFTs. Through the window, passersby will be able to view the work being made from the datasets, as well as the projections of work created collaboratively with artificial intelligence.
Hailing from rural Southwestern Pennsylvania, Jen Palmer currently lives and works in Savannah, Georgia. She works across various mediums, using her artistic process to hold space, make connections, and create expressions of radical hope.
Open Studio Hours: Thurs - Sun, 12 - 5 PM - Pre-registration via calendly is encouraged!”
OBSERVANCE
Review of my recent exhibition: OBSERVANCE
OBSERVANCE was held in conjunction with over 60 other exhibitions taking place in the month of May as part of the inaugural Taking. Up. Space. Initiative. After the opening, I was honored to speak with the Thrive Together Network about the exhibition and the work. I also held a live Q & A session on Instagram discussing my process, working with artificial intelligence, and creating a virtual exhibition. There were over 200 individual visitors to the exhibition, and I’m grateful to each of you who spent time in this space.🖤
“During a month-long residency, I practiced holding space for myself using mindfulness and creative expression using traditional materials. This practice has been developed through my studies in art therapy and personal trauma recovery work, with the phenomenological knowledge that these expressions are tied to our bodies. We can not create anything that does not come from within us. AI is the same, it can only give us back what we teach it. I use it as a tool for reflection in meditative practice, where I observe the AI rendered images with curiosity and non-judgment. The works that come from this practice serve as reminders to the viewer, of self-acceptance, of acceptance of others, and that we can create these spaces for ourselves and each other.”
The exhibition consisted of work available as editions of one, in print format, or for the video work, as an NFT.
This next series of images is presented as a slide show to demonstrate the placement of still and video works together. In the exhibition, as you “approached” the video pieces, they would start playing, and loop continuously.
Below are some more screenshots of the exhibition space. During the exhibition, you could navigate the rooms using the arrows, your mouse, clicking on a piece to view it up close, or by using the menu to tour piece by piece or travel to a specific artwork. Clicking on an image would take you up close, and the works could be purchased from that screen.
Thanks for taking a look at OBSERVANCE. If you want to make sure you get notified about my next exhibition, sign up for my newsletter here.
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