Felt Against The Machine

Felt Against The Machine: Beach Ocean Sky In Wet Felted Wool

Thanks to Bruce Sterling for bringing to my attention DALLEmini, the browser based (weak) artificial intelligence that produces impressive, strong images from text prompts. Created by Boris Dayma, I take my hat off to you and everybody who helped evolve this technology to be nearly indistinguishable from magic. Maybe it will wear off?  

I’ve been anticipating experiments with DALLE since I first heard about it 3 years ago. Over the last 48 hours I’ve been in a poetic frenzy, a Dallemini fire raging in my head. A satisfactory feeling of being understood, being in control of your own graphic design team, playing god turning word to image. Ideogrammic Method?

Last night I used the text prompt “Beach ocean sky in wet felted wool” and received this feedback from Dallemini. Since experimenting with wet-felting I thought, why not make my point, why not try to remake the image the A.I. made? A crafty digital to analogue conversion. Fungible from non-fungible. I picked one from the six served up and the results are currently drying in front of me. Here is the Dallemini version I imitated:

The general point I’m making here is that A.I. and technology can be used to assist art and crafts, not necessarily replace them. If digital images and digital media are your current work space, beware, there’s a change coming. Similar to the effects of sampling in music, Dallemini and further interactions will disrupt art media and design. And are sure to entertain for a long while. My advice is to learn a craft that existing A.I. or advanced robotics cannot imitate well. Wet-felting is my example for your consideration.

I’m also a drummer, DJ and writer, and aware that these three disciplines have been decimated by technology and commerce and the global pandemic. Crappy news headlines and articles edited by bots, drums without drummers and DJ algorithms that pull from a record bag 10 millions songs. Sew, felt against the machine. Mint your Nifty Felted Tokens NFT’s.

Love, steve fly

P.s If you’d like a hand-crafted wet-felted piece of art by me, or want to collab’, join my Patreon and I’ll send you one.
https://www.patreon.com/stevefly

Human Wakebox: Beatbox And Finnegans Wake.