Exploring the Intersection of Humanistic Originality and Artificial Intelligence in Art and Design5/12/2024 Zile Peng 21002596 Graphic and Media Design Introduction My SIP is to explore different image production methods to interpret Christmas, and the outcome is a range of Christmas card designs in different visual styles and different making methods including AI generation, illustration, typography, photography, and combinations of these different approaches. My experiments with AI made the biggest impression on me, so this blog is my reflection on exploring the impact of AI in art and design. The new agency I explored in my SIP is: adhering to humanistic originality, embrace the application of AI technology in art and design. This blog explains my new agency by exploring two questions: “Can AI replace creatives?” and “Can AI be a tool used by creators?” Can AI replace creatives? To answer this question, we need to understand where the real core and particularity of creation lies. French philosopher Henri Bergson (1907) argues that the concept of creativity is a vital force inherent in life, intuition and subjective experience are essence in the creative process in his book “Creative Evolution”. Furthermore, according to Margaret Boden's book "Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise"(2012), the essence of creation may not be solely associated with human attributes such as emotion and intuition, since creativity can be understood and potentially replicated through computational processes. She stated that "Computational creativity is the study and simulation, by computational means, of behavior, natural and artificial, which would, if observed in humans, be deemed creative."(2012) However, human creativity requires feelings, subjective experiences, and originality that are difficult for algorithms to imitate. Human creativity is fundamentally influenced by cultural context, intuitive leaps, and artistic authenticity. It is dubious to believe that computational procedures alone can perfectly simulate creativity. "If you want to create something, you need real excitement emotion, not superficial vision.” (Yohji Yamamoto, 2016) The so-called AI art is exactly this “superficial vision”. Based on the above arguments, it concludes that AI cannot replace designers and artists who are really creating. Can AI be a tool used by creators? When I used Midjourney (a cutting-edge AI engine) to do Christmas card design, if I use “design a Christmas card” as the prompt, the images generated are all very stereotypical Christmas illustrations with the most common colour combinations and compositions. It shows that AI understands these words very accurately, but at the same time, accuracy also means the loss of exploration from other angles. This kind of images are visually in line with popular aesthetics and inevitably boring. I wanted to express Christmas from a more unique perspective. Christmas is usually a time for family reunions, but astronauts in space might not have this opportunity to reunite with their families on Earth, so I thought of creating a Christmas from an astronaut’s perspective. I used the prompt: “Christmas, astronaut”. The generated images are very realistic with a combination of astronaut and Christmas elements and express the lonely atmosphere. I didn’t want to show too much loneliness in the greeting card, so I changed the prompt to “design a Christmas card with astronauts celebrating Christmas”. The generated images at this time are getting closer to what I want. I didn't want this image to be too realistic at this point, I wanted it to be more of a design than a photo, but here’s a challenge that at I didn't know how to edit my prompt without that design picture in my mind. If I encounter this problem when I do design by myself, I will do some artists research. At this time, I also did some artists research and directly added the artists’ names in the prompt. The result was not ideal because it was difficult to see the artist's style in the generated images. Then I tried to import the artist's representative work and make Midjourney to refer to this style to generate the images. At this time, the generated images fit the style of the imported image very well. However, it is only a similarity in visual style, it is difficult to express the artist’s thoughts and concepts behind the work. This just confirms the point I discussed in the previous part of this blog: it is difficult for AI to completely simulate the human creative path. However, this experiment shows that although AI cannot replace creators, it can be a tool to help creators create. Different artists use AI in different ways, and these human choices contain human subjective consciousness and emotions. In the above example, this is represented by entering different prompts in Midjourney to generate different images. AI generated image is “super vision”, but artists’ use can inject “real excitement emotion”. AI artist wonder_xin explored many visual possibilities in Midjourney, trying to combine different styles to create a sense of visual strangeness, such as Chinese garden & Disney character(fig1), Western sculptures & Eastern Buddha(fig2), Robots & Wedding(fig3). Pentagram partners Andrea Trabucco-Campos and Martín Azambuja explored "Artificial Typography"(fig4), where they used Midjourney to generate letterforms based on the styles of famous artists like Isamu Noguchi and Hilma af Klint. For example, the AI was prompted with: “Letter B by Louise Bourgeois, crochet.” These artists used AI to create artworks that express their different ideas. The advantages of AI are its speed and huge amount of information. If artists can control it well, AI will be a practical tool that makes creation more efficient. Conclusion: According to the arguments made by Henri Bergson, Margaret Boden, and Yohji Yamamoto, the first part of this article explores the question of whether AI can replace artists, following the next part using my experience of using AI to do design as an example to discuss whether AI can be used as a tool in the creative process. With my new agency to embrace AI and stick to humanity, I plan to combine AI with other disciplines in the following months to explore the possibilities of more new creative methods. Reference List: Bergson, H. (1911), Creative Evolution, New York, Henry Holt and Company Boden, M. (2012), Creativity and Art: Three Roads to Surprise, USA, Oxford University Press The Business of Fashion (2016). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSJsqYH-hK4
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