ICYMI: Chevy feeds its original photos into an AI to create an NFT series (and documents it all here). Follow on Twitter for first glances.
Okay, so… the first day of creating!
I signed up for Discord → signed up for the paid version of Midjourney (MJ, if you’re mean) → started experimenting…
First I asked MJ to imagine a lot of different things that had nothing to do with the NFT photo series – you know, to feel the limits of it.
These were things like:
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‘A landing page of a technical website’
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“A 1990s Space Age Computer Commercial”
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“A late 1980s-early 1990s style Apple computer ad featuring a young man and his father looking at an Apple computer in their home office”
Okay, damn! Pretty cool…
What’s cooler is that you can give MJ a hyperlink to an image and it will use it as a reference.
Or if you don’t want it to point to a specifically photo, you can specify that it refers to a general style/combination of styles.
This is when I got my first ‘Oh. Sh*t. This is going to change the moment…
See, my thought is: people don’t have the capacity for that WHERE originality (everything is influenced by outside influences). some way).
However, we can create the illusion of true originality by taking in an array of influences, mixing them up with our own personal tastes and making some lucky mistakes along the way.
(Personal taste + influences = “new” art style).
Once I realized I could pass my own original photos to Midjourney, tell it what photographic styles I was trying to combine when I took it, and it would spit out a photo that combines them all…
That is when I got my ‘Oh. Sh*t’ moment – because I realized:
All that time, work, learning, trial and error between ‘idea’ and ‘final creation’?
AI hyper pulls it together. Of days/months/years – to seconds.
(It’s as exciting as it is terrifying).
But why should I tell you, when I can show you…
First, here’s a photo I took while visiting LA, in 2019 (it will come into play later):
Now it is worth noting that there are two photographers that I really love and would like to combine: Larry Sultan and Nguan.
The problem is: I’m not much of a photographer (I’ll admit it).
But then again – I shouldn’t be either – photography is a side hobby that I have slipped in and out of over the years.
Larry and Nguan have committed whole lives to their profession.
So I started thinking…
What happens if I give MJ my photo along with the prompt “Photo of Larry Sultan and Nguan”? I can tell you now: it’s nothing worth sharing.
Look, Nguan is like Cher – he only has one name.
And while Nguan seems to be a relatively uncommon surname (Ancestry.com only 3000 times ‘Nguan’ appears in census records), Midjourney struggles to reconcile ‘Nguan’ with a photographic style.
So I rigged it.
Nguan’s style is distinguished by the use of pastel colors – the next best thing I could think of was the work of Nguan’s friend, Petra Collins.
Not a perfect match, but hey – I’m here to experiment!
So this is what I got when I sent MJ my photo + the “Photo by Larry Sultan and Petra Collins” prompt.
I know art is subjective – but god damn it! That’s so much cooler than anything I’ve ever made (and took a whopping 30 seconds to make!).
This discovery took me down one hell of a conceptual/ethical/moral rabbit hole…
A rabbit hole that we will explore together, tomorrow in Part 3.
Follow on Twitter (Instagram coming up) for first looks at every NFT release.
Want to win a 1/1 NFT upon release? Come in here.
PS Want to try making your own AI images?
Sign up for our newsletter and invite a friend using the referral code in the welcome email.
You will then be invited to our Discord, where you will get free access to Midjourney (the AI tool we use for this project).