Works on Paper 2025
This summer, I downloaded an AI image generator and started asking it to show me things. Even when I got very specific in my requests, the application and I would often imagine extremely different images. I became most interested in how the AI rendered natural objects, such as seashells. I would often combine ideas and concepts in the forefront of my mind with direct requests like "pink univalve seashell". The addition of these personal concepts, such as motherhood, the feminine, and protection, would cause the program to make minor- and often surprisingly apt- changes in the imagery. The results of the AI-generated seashells were never as any shell I've seen or that actually exists, but more an amalgamation of various parts of real organisms, in addition to some extra curves, bumps, and crevices. Sometimes, strange, tiny animals would appear standing next to the shells, as if the image was a snapshot of a real seashell, on a beach, existing in its natural habitat with other native lifeforms. These are drawings made from my experiments with the AI image generator, very much inspired by the drawings of Ernst Haeckel and his theory that, over time, from life came a series of successively higher forms.