Visionary Art & Music by Michael Garfield

#Ganesha c/o #Midjourney. Because, as I was just discussing today with Tadaaki Hozumi for a forthcoming episode of #FutureFossils Podcast, the esoteric take on #AIart tools is that they're portals through which the spirit realm has unprecedented access to the supposedly secular modern world. (See also Timothy Snyder's 2019 essay on the Turing Test for the New York Review of Books.) ... So if we're going to invoke/summon deities and spirits with #AI, let's make them good ones, eh? 🐘🖖🏽💗✨ https://www.instagram.com/p/Cmp7rrvsvvR/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

In the moment before acting lies a void where every future gleams, reflecting every other every moment a uniquely blooming world. In the space between two thoughts where every other instant grows expanding now into infinity and every possibility unfurls... How do you choose your next life? (From "Indecision" on The Age of Reunion, available at Bandcamp) #midjourmey #midjourneyart #promptism #aiart #AIArtwork #aiartcommunity #flowers #floral #psychedelic #dreaming #diffusion #diffusionmodel #stablediffusion #stablediffusionart #bardo #lyrics https://www.instagram.com/p/CmJ1rvIOl71/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Playing with my song lyrics as a #Midjourney prompt and #GlitchLab for postprocessing: "In the moment before acting lies a #void where every #future gleams, reflecting every other every moment a uniquely #blooming world. In the space between two thoughts where every other instant grows expanding now into #infinity and every #possibility unfurls..." ✨ From "Indecision" (live at @meowwolfsantafe 2022) ⚔️ (at Meow Wolf Santa Fe) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmIwfq9sm5B/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Apropos of nothing...just working on some visions of a transcendent future for an upcoming book project. PS Go listen to #FutureFossils @futurefossilspodcast episode 195 ✨🖖✨ #dreamspace #AIArtwork #AIart #aiartist #midjourney #midjourneyart #scifiart #sacredart #visionaryart (at Santa Fe, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmH9Zv3vT8I/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

🎤 New episode of @FutureFossilsPodcast on #AIArt! https://www.patreon.com/posts/195-i-art-panel-75834982 The smartest conversation I've had on this topic to date, and the show notes aggregate enough intelligent commentary on this issue to keep you preoccupied for months (at which point it will all still be relevant, in spite of the rapid developments in this area.) Enjoy! I don't often beg for shares but this one deserves as much attention as it can muster... ✨ About This Episode: This week we dig down as what W.J.T. Mitchell called “paleontologists of the present” to explore the ramifications of #AI on the #creative economy as lensed through two notorious #WilliamGibson quotes: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed” and “The street finds its own uses for things.” Joining me on the call are artists Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, Jamie Curcio, Topher Sipes, and Julian Picaza — all of whom I hold in high esteem and all of whom are doing fascinating things both with A.I. tools and without them. I recommend this profound discussion for some refreshing sobriety in what has so far proven to be a totally crazy pants public discourse dominated by people who either submit unthinkingly to new technologies or run from them screaming without anchoring their perspectives in any kind of historical perspective whatsoever… Be sure to give this episode’s extensive show notes your careful attention, as I’ve collected here a whole semester’s worth of reading and listening materials on this and adjacent subjects with the goal of having a single master compendium to drop into public threads on these subjects whenever possible. #Midjourney #DALLE #ChatGPT #GPT #AIArtist #ArtBasel #ScienceFiction #DigitalArt #TechEthics #AIEthics #IPLaw https://www.instagram.com/p/CmFX_UMvzDu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Okay I did the thing. Not bad...for the money I'm more impressed with @astria_ai than @lensa.ai but off the bat it's easier to get better results with the latter. Lensa is clearly trying to flatter its users...but it seems to stray from people's features a lot even with good training sets, and still struggles with hands and guitars and (to a lesser degree) eyes. Astria isn't as clean or set-and-forget but with the ability to mix in your own text prompts and going with the pay-by-model-training rather than pay-by-image-batch revenue model, it seems like you get more control and more of a learning opportunity. That said, perhaps more sensitive to and less forgiving of subpar training photo sets. Either way, this stuff is evolving FAST, and even if the economics of it seem like orgs are still just guessing at what makes sense (I was annoyed to see Lensa's price go up precipitously in the span of A DAY), the ubiquity of this tech will eventually undermine early-stage novelty-based business models... #AIPortrait #AIArt #ITrainMachines (at Santa Fe, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClsYKhfMhBY/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Let's just for the sake of argument say we remixed #DUNE with #TheYellowSubmarine. Because why wouldn't we? Featuring: #PaulMcCartney as #PaulAtreides, obviously #JohnLennon as #LietKynes #GeorgeHarrison as #Stilgar #RingoStarr as the #GalacticEmperor The #BlueMeanies as The #Harkonnens #YokoOno as a #BeneGesserit sister (and of course, #ShaiHulud proves harder to summon than I was led to believe...) #FanArt #FanFiction #SciFiArt #DuneMovie #TheBeatles #Midjourney #AIArt #AIArtist * This is a just-for-fun, noncommercial fan art project * (at Arrakis, Desert Planet) https://www.instagram.com/p/CloaWO2usRP/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Please excuse the cryptic misspelling but I have to dodge the algoz: Two more days to scoop printz & OGs on my siite at fitty perzent oaf! Use SIXFOOTTURKEY at the lank in me byo. If you have trouble just DM this guy! Thanks for helping me raise some kids! #dinosaurart #dinoart #paleoart #Velociraptor #meadowlark #mermaid #biomech #abstractart #visionaryart (at Santa Fe, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CleYd26Pvjy/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Scenes from my first AI art exhibition #Hyperborea, coming to @javajoessantafe in December! Just a taste...the show will feature 30 upscaled and edited #visions of #LostCivilizations and #faerie cities based on pages from my 2018 #FutureFossils coloring book, remixed in #Midjourney with #inspiration from #retroscifi book covers and album art. The pandemic and its aftermath have nitro-boosted my #fantasy gland and dunked me into a constant meditation on what lies beyond. And I've had an amazing time since January exploring #AIArtwork and what it means for the evolution of the creative workflow and economy...this show is intended to provoke the #SantaFeArt scene into having a bigger conversation about how to see these controversial technologies as part of a continuous and long-unfolding process of innovation, discovery, and the exploration of the #imagination or #AdjacentPossible — how this metamorphosis, while daunting, doesn't have to be a fearful change but can empower a new platform for the human spirit to express itself and make us more capable aesthetic technicians, in keeping with the premodern and much longer history of religious art and artifice. Stay tuned for more details and message me if you would like to reserve one of the 8"x8" 1:1 canvases! (at Java Joes) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClMYIFDPF4A/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Used one of my coloring book pages as an input for #Midjourney and it gave me a slee of these lovely sculptural half-colored line work pieces, this being my favorite, but would not reproduce this look past the first generation. All of the second generation on look like finished oil paintings on the sci-fi/fantasy spectrum... #imaginaryarchitecture #fantasyarchitecture #architecture #architexture #aiart #scifiartwork (at Santa Fe, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkwFcNRvNXb/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Just doing a retro sci-fi landscape thing again, can't stop. This time used a page from my free 2018 coloring book (which you can find public on Patreon) as an image input in Midjourney and asked it to fill in my work as it "saw fit" and here we are. Makes me want to be French and in the 1970s and on acid. (at Santa Fe, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CktjC9kv-GJ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Maybe it's because my limited palette with paint markers more often than not led to rather lurid color schemes, but I have always loved grayscaling finished paintings. Grew up using mostly pencil and/or pen, and halftone work is automatically more classy. Thinking I should add a set of totally desaturated alt prints on the site? #grayscale #halftone #dinosaurs #tyrannosaurus #archaeopteryx #virginmary #fractals #space #scifiart #biomech #paintpen https://www.instagram.com/p/CkouVyuPxxr/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#peacocks & #peacock #goddesses, c/o #midjourney, because I'm a little bit obsessed with #melektaus and #pavo and the strangely convergent world #mythology of #spectral #angels (think #eyes and "#biblicallyaccurateangels" and it all starts to make sense... See also the #argos, see also #kartikreya, see also #stgeorge, see also #enki: language and #entropy and #prisms). Yeah. bit.ly/pavonis if you want to HEAR what all of this evokes for me...at least as of 2017. 🦚🌈✨ (at Santa Fe, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj3oEYhPxn2/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Let me tell you the story of the HOURS I have spent cleaning up local events bulletin boards this week to make room for posters about tomorrow's concert at @honeymoonbrew ... People flyer here the way they drive, or speculate on real estate. It's insane. If it were synchronous communication it would be a mosh pit or demolition derby. Nobody cleans up expired events — not the businesses, not the professional flyering agencies, not the 9000 independent bodyworkers and real estate agents who all seem to think they need to put up their cards in FIVE DIFFERENT PLACES. On this battlefield for the conquest of human attention, nobody cleans up the dead. There are no rules of engagement. Your commanding officers are insane and no help is coming for you. ...now that I'm done ranting about a town where, ALSO, no one uses their turn signals, the hospital ER made my friend wait over half an hour while she was doubled over in pain, nobody does anything about the spiky weeds, and leadership seems totally happy to let the escalating cost of residential properties force everyone who only wants ONE house out of the city... I invite you to one of the GOOD things about Santa Fe: the very small but highly qualified local underground music scene. ✌🏼💗 (at Santa Fe, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cjq7ymVMZlQ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

It took something like 200 iterations to get Midjourney's Stable Diffusion instance to produce a singing meadowlark *with its mouth open as if singing.* It took almost as many to get the black band that runs across its chest...and NONE of the ones with their mouths open have a good band on them. Lots of cool birds in this series but most of them look like sparrows, woodpeckers, kingfishers, or hummingbirds. Not Sturnella neglecta. This is why post-processing in Photoshop remains a must. (These are some prelims for the cover art for an upcoming musical single I'll debut on 8-string guitar this Friday at Michael Garfield at HoneyMoon Brewery • Santa Fe, NM 💗) #generativeart #aiart #diffusionnetwork #stablediffusion #stablediffusionart #aiartist #aibird #birdart #meadowlark #sturnellaneglecta #westernmeadowlark #birdsong #neuralnetwork #neuralnetworkart #santafeartist https://www.instagram.com/p/Cjl8Lbnsccy/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Unique AI-generated variants for the cover art of my 2022 cyberguitar EP Ephemeropolis. Each variant will only be printed ONCE as an 11"x11" signed print on glossy cardstock; select your variant number at checkout and I will delete the option as soon as I have received your order, guaranteeing you will remain in perpetuity THE ONLY person with that print. The series is comprised of 40 unique HD designs in total. Think of these as analog NFTs...it's an experiment exploring the fascinating intersection of digital abundance and artificial scarcity, a performance of the flickering and transient nature of the temporary cities from which the EP draws its name. Every print comes with a free download of the EP in both WAV and MP3 (preview it on Bandcamp, Spotify, or Apple Music) AND a link to the image file itself, in case you ever want to replace the original due to damage. https://michaelgarfieldart.com/products/ephemeropolis-ep-ai-cover-art-unique-variants If you want to learn more about my work with, and philosophical musings about, AI artwork, dig into my blog and recent appearances on The Jim Rutt Show and Third Eye Drops Podcast. ❤ . . . #retroscifi #scifilandscape #surrealart #surrealartist #psychedelicart #psychedelicartist #midjourney #stablediffusion #future #futuristic #futurist #facemelting #psychedelicfuturist #dreamscape #dreamscapes #posthuman #ephemeropolis (at Santa Fe, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjYM3hUOlid/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Grateful for this extremely cool tiny painting my mysterious friend @becomingdragon mailed me with no warning or provocation! Cris Beasley is one of the most magical people I know and that's saying a lot. Her oracle card deck is INCREDIBLE. The work she's doing to help people heal their trauma is SO needed and SO important. I highly recommend you follow her and benefit in whatever ways you can from her work! (at Santa Fe, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjVuVmpuDW7/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=