Remix

Albert Abdul-Barr Wang, Large Professor

As this is a series about the concept of remix, I thought about the foundation of hip-hop beatmaking where I used Playform to offer respect to these great Black rap producers. Large Professor, who is from my hood in Queens, was the main producer for Main Source’s first album and did some underrated production work for his brilliant solo album during the 1990’s. Playform’s new Stylize function allowed me to combine the abstract with the figurative within an innovative framework. Colors and shapes within the context of visual sampling were used to formulate a postmodern portrait of well-respected figures within the Golden Age of Hip-Hop era. This flexibility which Playform allows the artist to create innovative compositions with a conceptual skeleton is incredible.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize. This Pro-Art Filter got the most users on Playform in the lead up to the exhibition launch.

Carla Gannis, Visoki Dečani Phenomenon

Given the renewed mainstream interest in unidentified aerial phenomenon (i.e. UFO’s), I decided to dig deeper into historic art works that have been interpreted as depicting alien aircraft and/or extraterrestrial life. The Visoki Dečani Monastery in Kosovo, Serbia, contains a particularly intriguing painting from 1350. There are two “celestial bodies” in the top left and right corners of the painting that some journalists have claimed represent UFOs. Inspired by this painting, as myth, metaphor, or possible documentation of an event, I collaborated with Playform in creating a remix of the two “spaceship” details in the painting. Neither a human nor an AI seem to be able to truly determine, at this point in history, the factuality of alien visitations; however in creating this mashup, I’ve produced a fanciful visual manifestation of our past and present preoccupations with the extraterrestrial.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Yeli Rodriguez, Influenced

I decided to revisit my first Playform project from 2019: my “artificial self(-portrait)” series. I used the original Inspiration Collection, which consisted of approximately 30 self-portrait doodles that I had minted on Editional in mid-2019, and began a new Freeform Project. All works submitted below are iterations curated from that training session, and have then been digitally edited to shift some color tones and adjust the saturation.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Chris Trueman, MCP Machine Collaborations

“MCP” Machine Collaborations is a project using Playform artificial intelligence to create reinterpretations of my paintings. I then sort through thousands of generated images and select a curated set of images to use as keyframes in a video which is then stitched together again using the AI software. The AI appears to contemplate the relationship between image and the picture plane negotiating depth of space and the imposed edges of the video. MPC is an artwork that lives in a perpetual state of self definition and change.

The collaborative component assures that while I am the originator of the image data set and later on as a curator in the selection of keyframes for the video, I am neither fully in control, nor am I completely removed from the process. This process explores the middle ground between human and machine.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Andrew Tricaso, Ocean & Sky

The images were created by adding music I made into a software that creates images from sounds. In this case, I used Amplitude circles which, based on the volume and frequency of the sound, creates still images. I then sequenced them into a video. The AI slightly alters the circles when they are recreated and therefore the sounds. If you were to reverse this process you would have AI generated sounds.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Trygve Skogrand, Wrapped Words

The work “Wrapped in Words” is a self-biographical work, based on my experience as growing up as a Christian homosexual. My father was a vicar, and I grew up in a safe, traditional bible-oriented family, where sex and bodies “did not exist”, and homosexuality wasn’t even heard of. When I found out I was gay, I lived through many years of difficult conflict trying to combine being what I had learnt with being what I was created. In the process I tried to hide myself and my body in theories and learnt texts, making me safely and unhappily wrapped in words.The work combines a nude self-portrait with a page from one of my father’s old German theological books on sin and redemption, that I have painted with watercolours before scanning and processing further.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Jen Palmer, Waveform

I make expressions of radical hope, using color and intuitive abstract shifting forms that create resonance of this concept with the viewer. In this project, the forms that came through all reminded me of being underwater and looking up at the light. I used a set of around 50 images that are exemplary of my work over the past few years, and then remixed the results on my selections to bring out prominent features using the refine option.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Nathaniel Stern, Listening Tree

Machine Growth is an ongoing series of AI-driven videos, which imagines and images a plant-like life for everyday technologies, by creatively morphing them into trees, bushes, flowers, or other greenery. Laptops, keyboards, tapes, drives, phones, circuits, cameras and other electronic waste are “alive” in as much as they grow and spread, consume and break down, diffuse waste and minerals, shift power and stories into and around the world - literally and metaphorically.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Roxy Savage, Cuties (Slinky)

This work is inspired by a kitschy mid-century ceramic knick-knack depicting “cupie doll” boy/girl faces with a text that reas “kissin’ don’t last-cookin’ do.” The work I’ve created for Playform Remix are visual responses to the cuteness and veiled sexist message of this piece of “kitchenalia.” I’ve remixed the “cupie doll"using garish pop colors to amplify the imagery and recontextualize or re-cook the images with sound and motion. My processes involve photography, adobe digital drawing, Playform’s Creative Morph, giphy, video editing, and sourcing audio via Internet Archives.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Katya Grokhovsky, Smog Body

Smog Body is a series of AI altered mixed media digital painting collages, exploring the body and the environment. Playform was used to remix two sets of image collections through Style Transfer in AI Model Training module.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Irina Raicu, Self Portrait with a Hat in Pandemic Times

Self Portrait with a Hat in Pandemic Times is my personal portrait reinvented through Artificial Neural Networks. The portrait communicates a positive attitude to face this difficult period of our lives. The mask is transformed into a hat surrounded by the abstract form of pink roses petals. The floral romanticism combines itself with the impressive palette of dynamic colours and falls into the abyss of a dreaminess state.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Michael Pierre Price, Ouroboros Ars Infinitus

I was curious to see if I could create my own highly individualized drawing/painting style from digital works I had created previously, by now using Playform. I used one surreal work as the “subject” of the piece and a fractal-based work as the “stylistic” element to produce the unique hybrid.

I used one of my surreal works (“Ouroboros: Nonlinear Premonitions”) and combined it with one of my fractal-based artworks (“Juggling Harlequin”) and used Playform’s Stylize technique to merge the two into a new hybrid work of art.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.

Witold Riedel, Forbidden Memory

The Forbidden City looks like a microchip from space. It is maybe like a brain too. From the ground, and when walked into at the right pace, and the right mindset, it feels like a miracle and an incredible human achievement. This was at some point the ultimate center of power on the planet, even if many places on the planet had no idea it existed. The way the spaces open and close, the paths only the Emperor was allowed to step onto and yet never would. The roofs designed to interact with the rise of the sun, the hundreds upon hundreds of meticulously lacquered trees, the countless tiles prepared in secret processes. This place of magic was only open to some, then to some others, then to yet other groups.

I like how Playform allows me to reinterpret the photographs I took and to turn them into something akin to memories. I used hundreds of photographs from the Forbidden City and used Playform to amalgamate them into something that feels more like a dream or a memory. I then upscaled some of the images using platform and after adding a few more touches, I prepared them to be printed as photographic objects.

Now available as a Pro-Art Filter on Stylize.