- R3imagine with Anatola
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- Zooming Out
This week, I was forced to zoom out and look at my life story from the perspective of someone in the distant future. It was humbling to realize that in the grand scheme of things, many accomplishments, accolades, and name-brand associations won't stand the test of time when it comes to communicating who you are.
If someone were to read your life story 1 billion years from now, they likely would not recognize the household names we want to work with. They won't understand the gravity of the achievements that boost our egos and flood us with likes.
What will continue to matter in 1 billion years is your why. Your mission. The driving force behind the work you do, and how that touched the people around you. Your service to humanity will always be relevant. - ANATOLA
AI Art Overload
If you've been on social media this week, you've probably been inundated by the stylized portraits of your friends created by Lensa AI. Lensa is an image editing app that uses artificial intelligence to transform your photos into your fairy princess, animé, or celestial alter ego.
How does it work? Simply download the Lensa AI app, upload 10-20 selfies, and for as little as $3.99 receive a library of magical avatar versions of yourself. Be warned that for those of us with darker skin tones you will likely receive, as I did, a good chunk of avatars that look more like your Aryan relative than yourself. But a handful of the images generated will be stunning and be sure to take your breath away.
The discl(ai)mer 🛑
It is equally hard to ignore the controversy surrounding the growing adoption of artificial intelligence artwork. Artist Greg Rutkowski found his name being used as a prompt over 93,000 times. This led to AI-generated creations he was never involved with drowning out his own work in search engines, which he claimed is a threat to his career.
Other distinguished artists such as Sam Yang found that the unique style of art he took years to develop was being replicated by AI in seconds. These AI creation tools are now so good that it is hard to tell which artwork was made by real artists and which was made by AI.
Now, I have a traditional visual art background. I have spent weeks mixing my paints, measuring my angles, and agonizing over the details in order to create realistic portraits of people for commissioned paintings.
That said, when I employed the artificial intelligence text-to-image tool DALL•E 2 to create a series of portraits about combating climate change that was exhibited during Art Basel in Miami, I was very impressed by this new and more efficient mode of creation.
For one of my art pieces that were exhibited during Basel, I simply typed the following phrase into the AI system and received my next artistic showpiece:
"Architecture of a highway of the future. A fast hyperloop electric train tunnel veers by. There is a green park with trees, grass, and purple flowers."
That said, it did take hours of rephrasing my prompt, getting the words just right, and plugging in different colors and details in order to create a portrait that reflected my vision. Still, it was extremely satisfying to generate a stunning image that was tailored to my unique aesthetic in a fraction of the time it takes to paint original artwork.
With DALL•E 2, you can specify the kind of style you want your artwork to be in. You can indicate whether you want your creation to be an oil painting, clipart, a 3D render, or a myriad of other styles.
In my experience, hiring a 3D artist to render an original 3D art could cost thousands of dollars and take weeks, if not months to complete. Receiving a stunning 3D art piece in seconds felt almost too good to be true.
Stories Are Seeds 🌱
As children, we are often told stories that shape who we are. Specifically, stories about how we should behave in the world. Fairytales like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, or Little Red Riding Hood serve as vehicles for larger lessons about life: don't tell lies and don't follow strangers into the woods.
At their core, stories exist to communicate a Universal lesson. A moral. They contain seeds that are planted into the heart of the viewer, and hold the power to change their perspective forever.
It is this power of storytelling that drew me to be a filmmaker. Especially when the stories told of historically marginalized people in the United States are often strewn with stereotypes and limiting narratives. I have long been a firm believer in the power of storytelling to inspire positive transformation.
Unfortunately, many of the stories dominating Hollywood abuse this power. For too long, stories have been saturated with excessive violence, sex, and questionable motives. Many movies and TV shows are designed to trigger a negative emotional response that keeps you stuck to the screen. A stark contrast from telling a moral that will make you a better person.
This dearth of morals in the stories we consume is one reason why I fell in love with the Black-owned streaming platform, Kweli TV. Their content, which showcases stories from Africa and its diaspora, is ripe with uplifting narratives that will inspire you while keeping you entertained and on the edge of your seat. It was refreshing to know that positive storytelling is out there, you just have to know where to look.
Among the many positive stories that KweliTV features is my very own short, Afro Algorithms. This 3D animated film in the Afro-Futurist genre explores the topics of AI and bias. In a distant future, an artificial intelligence named Aero is inaugurated as the world's first AI leader. However, she soon embarks on an enchanting journey where she discovers who she really is -- beyond her programming.
If you want to watch a story designed to inspire, stream Afro Algorithms on KweliTV today. Or, share it with a friend to ignite their imagination. 💙
Learning List
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."