Machines Of Adventure

Things still happen. Nothing lasts forever. All good at horseville 😉 Erm, still going on with the Ahasverus theme. #metasketching #acrylicpainting #alternative #comics https://www.instagram.com/p/CpBVkIcjmID/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Another awesome rainy day, another day in the office on planet Pontis Major. From the life of planetary major. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart #gravitysketch #ambiguity #cardesign #conceptdesign #aideation #brutalistarchitecture #scifi  

An experimentation with VR and AI for ideation continues. So much fun #lakeside #summerhouse, property of major of planet Pontis Major. #metasketching #digitalart #sketch #ideation #ai #aideation #conceptart #ambiguity #Architecture #boatdesign #yacht #scifi#gravitysketch #clipstudiopaint

#clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #stablediffusion #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart #gravitysketch #ambiguity #zbrush #VehicleDesign #transportationdesign #metasketching

From the collection of major of planet Pontis Major. Just cars, sculptures and a fireplace. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart #gravitysketch #ambiguity #VehicleDesign #transportationdesign #metasketching

I would enjoy such public transportation. Did they ban private vehicles on planet Pontis Major? #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart #gravitysketch  #ambiguity #VehicleDesign #transportationdesign #metasketching

The #Metasketching manifesto rule number one: Obey the ambiguity! That soothing voice of Bob Ross when he talked about happy accidents. I always thought that this was something really important, those happy accidents. However, a designer cannot rely on incidents. We are not allowed to expect the unexpected. We must wrangle our fantasies and deliver. Therefore we love to deal with ambiguity. Because there, there we can make our creative choices. Another awesome rainy day on planet Pontis Major. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart #gravitysketch #ambiguity 

#Metasketching manifesto, rule number two: Explore and interact. Rain-loving creatures from planet Pontis Major. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #ai #stablediffusion #vr #gravitysketch #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart #exploration #creaturedesign

How much ambiguity do we need? And what kind of ambiguity? Sweet little soiree at planet Pontis Major. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #stablediffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart #ambiguity #starwars 

My favourite cognitive psychologist Barbara Tversky once observed a group of architects working on a museum building proposal. To my amusement, she described how those creative professionals went beyond just sketching as they started to talk about their design intentions and even used their bodies to express sizes, scale, proportions or rhythm in design patterns. By the way, that's precisely what I do when presenting my design concepts, and I know I am not alone here.Thanks to recent neuroscience findings, it turns out that our ability to create visually is deeply connected with verbal components, and it is inseparably embodied. So, when we learn to design, would that make sense to learn also to precisely verbalise and physically express our design intentions even during the ideation phase?The answer is definitely yes. Verbalisation and body storming became successful and valuable design methods, especially during ideation. At least, as confirmed in my workshops, I run with my students. (Hello @Rubika)So, here's the funny thing. In today's context of text-to-image AI, our verbalisation exercises are, in fact, lessons in "Prompt engineering."Back to planet Pontis Major. The Explorers monument.#clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart #AI

Lake Myiazaki, Planet Moebius, Ghibli system #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart

All the environment design artworks shown here result from a collaboration between an artist and artificial intelligence. The question is, why AI? Do we need it? And how could we use it? As an artist, my inspiration is often based on subconscious sparks of random ideas that sometimes come unexpected, untriggered. However, as a designer, it is unacceptable to rely on happy accidents. You know how much I love to dig into the science of ideation, so you won't be surprised that I may have a reasonable explanation for why we, as artists, find so much joy in dealing with ambiguity. It turns out that ambiguity might be the key to human creativity, particularly how our brains deal with it. Due to our poor sensory system, our brain is forced to crush ambiguity into choices. As neuroscientists such as David Eagleman or Anil Seth claim, these choices result from processing our memories, experiences, and emotions ... we are literary surfing our cognitive maps to interpret that indistinct indication. Although knowing how we process such visual noise is terrific, it might provide an insufficient foundation to drive creativity intentionally and in the given context. So, with that said, what if we can control the input signal, the ambiguity itself? And here comes the AI. Explicitly speaking, we do not talk about the general AI now but about its less (fortunately) sentient versions. Such as Generative Adversarial Networks, Contrastive Language Image Pre-Training or the recently popular Text-to-image Diffusion Models. So, in this topic, I was using Google's Colab notebook, called Disco Diffusion. As in other cases (Midjourney, Wombo Dream, Dall-E or Stable Diffusion), it generates an image based on your verbal prompt, but for this exact objective, it allowed me to control the ambiguity level of it better than the others. All of those, as mentioned earlier, may produce similar results, but their rendering outputs were too resolved and too precise for my needs. Why? It's all about exploration. If the image I want to interact with doesn't allow me to interpret it in various ways, and if it's too definite, how could I explore it? I want my AI to generate ambiguous images that are not just any random noise. I want my AI to help me start with something abstract enough, yet giving me hints in the required context, something I can paint over and interact with. Something new and crazy that I could use to consciously design. Thank you for joining in my exploration of planet Pontis Major over the last few weeks. It's been an enjoyable ride, thanks to this AI tool. By talking to an AI through my verbal prompts and playing with the dozens of images it generated, I could spend just ten or twenty minutes producing each of these images. It was as liberating and as joyful as doodling on a napkin. My research continues, and it seems that it crosses the borders of art and design. So please feel free to reach out via LinkedIn or email or follow me on my Facebook or Instagram. (Links in comments) Let's stop talking about happy accidents and let's talk about ambiguity.

An ordinary rainy day on planet Pontis Major. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart

Ya-dla-ba from SonnenTown, planet Pontis Major. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart

Windmills? Yes, these must be windmills. At planet Pontis Major. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart #environmentdesign

Golden hour at planet Pontis Major. Evenings are so beautiful here. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation #conceptart 

Life under the bridge on planet Pontis Major. So many future memories from this planet. #clipstudiopaint #wacom #cintiq #discodiffusion #Pareidolia #digitalart #sketch #ideation