This project is two digitally painted pieces meant to make the viewer think about the involvement of AI and machines in our future.  These pieces are painted to depict two different perspectives of the same scene, allowing the viewer to come up with their own story and opinion.  One scene shows a robot cleaning up a city street and covering a piece of graffiti on the side of a building. While the other scene is the point of view of the person who supposedly made the piece of art only seeing the robot covering it up, without the wider context of it cleaning the entire street to better the city.

From an individual to a nation, from tomorrow to infinity, the future is something society is always preparing for. Whether it's deciding what to have for dinner or designing a new way to travel to space, humanity is always looking for that next step forward. But is everyone's ideal the same as larger systems make it to be? What if it was possible to challenge that vision of the future and see what the future looks like at the individual level? "Prospective Optics" challenges both societies' views as well as AI's view of the future.

"Perspective Optics” is a museum exhibit installation that allows an individual to see a future they envision. A user can switch out lenses on a wall mount that allows them to view a solitary human in numerous different outcomes. The lenses display various utopias and dystopias that can be contextualized differently when put in the foreground and background of the human figure. 

This project is for everyone, allowing them to choose and challenge the path laid ahead. Each lens has a keyword assigned to it. When the lens is read by a sensor, the keyword is sent to a Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi then inputs the information into a template. The template is a story prompt for chat GPT, a text-based AI software. When chat GPT receives the prompt, it creates a story based on its database. The story is then relayed back to the viewer via audio. Allows the user to compare and contrast their interpretation to AI’s interpretation.

     Joining the studio for the first day, I was fatigued already with the buzz on AI art. At the time it seemed like an automatic collage creator or a simple solution. I only now have a more technical understanding of the AI art process, but my view is still negative.  While debating and really taking time to think, my thoughts are now more about the lack of beauty or ethics in the art that AI creates, which are far removed from the anxious or threatening first impressions. While sometimes you aren't able to tell the difference between AI art and real art, I still can't feel intense emotions towards an AI-created image. I feel the lack of time, thought, life experience, and effort makes the image feel empty or ghostly. Even modern or abstract art, which I don't usually understand or like, is still recognizable to me as so wholeheartedly human. Some artist cared enough to take the time to make it or put any sort of thought into it. AI is told to create and what to create, and it does it. That is all.

      AI was probably least utilized in my project in comparison to other projects from this studio. Even using it for visual inspiration felt wrong to me. I considered maybe if I prompted it to make a painting like what I was imagining, It would look better than anything I could put on paper solely from my mind. The AI has a better understanding of color theory, composition, and maybe aesthetic appeal too. So why risk making an image that might make me lose motivation? 

     If I use AI art in my future at all, I cannot imagine myself using it for anything I deem as important. For instance, I would use it to generate a fantasy city for a DND session, to get the players to understand the area and the vibe. I would NOT use AI to generate inspiration for my own art or projects. I feel as though that would take the fun out of it for me because I care about creations. I do not, however, care about a DND town we will temporarily be in, enough to draw it, even though an image would benefit the players. This lack of caring about some small things is why I would be emotionally able to generate an image for them. It's inconsequential and most importantly, does not affect my art.

When I first entered the studio, I had not been exposed to how powerful AI could be. I knew that AI had been growing at an astronomical rate and was becoming a more mainstream idea, but I was yet to explore it myself. I had always believed that AI could be used as a tool to help kick-start the creative process because it could generate ideas quickly and accurately. One could use those AI-generated ideas to add to their overall project idea and aid the iterative process.

When starting our process, we used an AI image generator named Midjourney to get basic ideas on how we would tackle the project and how we would combine the two ideas of robotics and humans. Midjourney could give us interpretations of a human with a robot arm, but we then realized that that idea needed to be more complex for what we were going for in our project. We then started researching how robotics could help in the medical field, which ended up sparking a flame in our design process. After shifting our focus to medical robotics, we input a prompt into Midjourney to help kick-start our designs of medical-looking robot arms. After looking at what Midjourney had come up with when it came to medical robots, I started to design a robot arm of my own in rhino 3d. The main programs that Jake and I utilized in this project were Midjourney and chatgpt. They both helped maximize our time in the day by helping us do simple tasks like finding a name for the sculpture and giving us creative direction. When I first got onto chatgpt, I was astonished at how fast the program worked and with incredible accuracy. I felt the same way with Midjourney because the program seems impossible. AI tools should be an option in school to help kids save time and create better products.

AI has come a long way and has become a useful tool for people in the design space. I could definitely see myself using these tools in the future, not just at Nuvu but also at beaver when I need some inspiration or to help me dive into a project when I have no ideas flowing in my head. Being in a situation where you want to get started on an idea but are faced with some mental roadblocks is very aggravating, and these AI tools could help clear those. AI has become so powerful that I could not imagine not taking advantage of all it has to offer. 

Jake's Brief: 

Synchronous Synergy is an art piece that prompts the viewer to think about how AI and robotics could help the healthcare industry in the future, Synchronous Synergy also prompts the reader to think about the drawbacks of the future of technology in healthcare. Humans and robots learn from each other and they could in the future rely on one another. The ouroboros (A snake that is eating its own tale) is a symbol of this feedback loop. This inspired the design of a robot arm and a human arm creating a loop or a circle with their arms. 

Researchers say that will AI and robotics will only be readily available to the rich. For that reason, the box the arm is coming out of is made of gold. This will show the wealth of the users. But at the same time, the gold will be cracking to show how while society is so concerned about preserving life society is not concerned about the quality of the life we live.

Ollie's Brief:

Synchronous Synergy is a sculpture that explores the concept of humans and robots coming together as one with an emphasis on the medical field. Robotics is coming a long way and one of the ways that robots have greatly improved the quality of life is that they are capable of performing complex surgeries with more precision than any human. Synchronous Synergy is a way to commemorate how far humans and robots have evolved together. The sculpture is also meant to portray an optimistic view of what is to come with these new advancements in technology. The piece takes inspiration from the Ooroborus (A snake that is eating its own tale) to represent the feedback loop created between humans and robots, but instead of a snake, it uses a robotic arm and a human arm coming together to create the loop.

I SWEAR IT'S ONLY A PAGE, IT'S JUST IN ESSAY FORMAT SO IT LOOKS LONGER!!!!!!!!

I had conflicting feelings about AI coming into this studio, and I still do.  I think that the technology is incredible, and it's pretty wild that it works as well as it does this early in its "lifetime."   However, it does have some pretty significant problems and implications. For the most part, I think that the problems with how AI gets its source material are things that can be worked on, fixed, and ultimately resolved. Licensing AI art for usage is a slightly bigger problem but not something without a solution. And I think that if these issues are addressed and fixed, AI art will be in a significantly better position. I think the bigger issue is the people online basically telling artists to fuck off, and that this machine that can't even get the number of fingers on a hand right is going to replace their passion and often, their lively hood.  However, I don't think that artists are entirely in the right either, I think that this IS something that is going to catch on fast, but not in the ways that the prophets of doom on Twitter are saying. I think that the use of AI for stock photos and fast concept art is the most like path it's going to take, and I think that even if that industry becomes dominated by AI, there will still be room for human artists to work, where personality and nuance are needed.  I think that artists shouldn't push back against AI art in its entirety, but just against the things that are ACTUALLY wrong with it, such as questionable methods of obtaining source material and people who are using it to devalue(?) other artist work. (this is something that happens even without AI being involved and is a much larger problem.) But I do think that AI art and human art should stay in their own lanes, and have minimal to no overlap at all.  


During my creation process, I used Midjourney as a method of gathering reference images for scenes or details that I had envisioned in my head and didn't want to go scrolling through google image search to find. While it was certainly faster than manually looking for the images, it has it's own very significant (at least for me) downside.  That being if I wanted a reference for a scene, I needed to know what that scene was going to look like to get the image to reference to make the scene.  This isn't a massive problem if you're just looking for lighting reference or how a curtain folds and wrinkles, but if you want to use AI as a starting point for a larger piece, you either give it a very vague prompt and end up with a pretty generic image, or you give it something very detail, but that that point, just draw it.  Overall I think it's a very interesting tool to use, especially in the context of innovation, but the nuance and inaccuracy of it make it somewhat frustrating.


I could see myself using Midjourney to get very interesting visual precedents for projects or to help generate a mood board, but I wouldn't go much further than that.  I believe that if I can't sketch something or have some sort of vision in my OWN head then I shouldn't be able to build it.  There is just something about doing that groundwork yourself that makes the final product feel a) more satisfying to pull off, and b) like your own work and almost part of you.  I think that there is something very different about coming up with your own idea and solving those problems yourself, and building something that a machine spits out.

My thoughts are very much all over the place, and I don't think three paragraphs are enough to represent all of them, but I hate writing so I'm just going to leave this as it is.

When we first started the process of using AI to help generate new ideas for our projects I thought of it as if it was almost cheating. It didn’t feel right to take new ideas from a generated image that used other images on the internet. But as we moved forward I could see that, even with how advanced it already is, it could never get your exact vision you had in your mind  into an image. However, it could create new unique and weird images that would lead you into making your own new ideas, rather than using it to completely give you a new idea, it was just a boost towards a new one. I still have positive and negative opinions on AI mainly to do with how people use it, but I definitely have more positive outlooks now than when I started.

The AI tools gave me an opportunity to really visualize the style of painting I wanted to do. At first I couldn’t decide thinking that I could go for semi-realism but once I saw how the ideas in impressionism form I really liked it. It benefited me into making that decision early rather than painting one style, not liking it, and starting all over. 

Yes I think I will use some of these tools to help me in future projects. But like I’ve stated in class I would never rely on it to complete an idea of my own because it feels lazy and goes against human nature to evolve and create. I will use Midjourny if I want to visualize my idea as an image and see how I can evolve it, I would only use Chatgbt to help me think out small ideas in a larger form and see if it can lead me to more thoughts in writing form.  

When I first entered the studio I had no idea what to expect. I had never done AI art or any type of AI-generated stuff. I learned a lot over the course of the studio about how these different programs work. I still don't fully understand how they work but I have a much bigger understanding. I went into the studio having seen some of this AI art on different social media platforms. I had no idea that it could be as free and creative as it was. I developed my skill of prompting the AI to get “better” images. I say “better” in the sense of the image is more to my liking and more specific. My opinion of this kind of art has not really changed that much. I still think it is super cool and creative, although now I do have an understanding of how it could take away some people's jobs. It has the potential to make designers obsolete in a way. They will still be needed in some fields but all of their creative work could be done by AI. I also think that this AI for some people is doing all the work. For my project, I still needed to make the sculpture and things like that but for other projects, the AI could just design the entire project for them. It is a super useful and new tool, but I do think that it can be abused. 

For my project, I used AI to help come up with some more stylistic choices. For example, for the robot arm, I asked the AI to design a medial robot arm. This helped me create the arm. Although the project was an art piece I did end up using Chat GPT just as much as Midjoney. The programs both helped influence my project, Chat GPT came up with the name and helped me focus on what field of AI and robotics I wanted to focus on. Midjorney helped make creative design-based choices. It surprised me how well these programs could basically read my mind. It felt weird to see how well these programs could recreate what I was thinking about, or the opposite. Make ideas that I would never have thought about. It was annoying to not get what you wanted out of Midjorney. Sometimes the AI would come up with something completely different than what I was thinking, in a bad way. I think that integrating AI into my project helped me develop many ideas. It also made me think twice about many different aspects of my project. 

I don't think I will use these tools too much in the future. I may use them to come up with titles for essays or to make images for different presentations. The reason for this is that I don't think I will find it that helpful. I think that I can come up with and develop most of the ideas I will need in life. Being able to develop those ideas is also a necessary skill in life. Not being able to come up with ideas renders you effectively useless. If you ever have a problem then how are you going to fix it? You would need to come up with an idea. I think that it is not worth losing a skill to make life a little bit easier. The more work you put into life the better your results will be.