Gen1: A Monk in AI Media-Making

Generative media expertise and what you get from your #generations of concept work directly correlates to 1) life experience 2) experimentation and 3) willingness to open up to new ways of working.

How does life experience play a role in working with AI?

For almost a decade before jumping back into interactive and tech media roles, I was a monk and a friar traveling to wisdom centers to understand how all wisdom traditions intersect. Connecting humans with insight, wisdom and the collected value of knowledge in context was a big part of my monastic study while writing with Abbot John Drais at Madre Grande, a theosophical and alchemical monastery near the US/Mexico border in California. Being a monastic traveler or friar who is also a coder and technologist, I began researching developments in AI and wisdom tradition context and connection at the same time, in the early 2000s as I could see these shared ways of working and thinking converging in what we know today as the field of #generativeai Media or by its other terms like #AIArt #GenerativeDesign and #AItools as ways to tap into collections of insight, beauty or wisdom.

Generative Media at this stage was still nascent and early, full of fuzzy logic and nowhere near the tools we share today, but the connections between universal and collected insight WITH our ability to search into these space with imaginative queries was already laid out at the campfire with other monks.

At the monastery we hosted meditation retreats on loving-kindness and wrote books and research related to how all wisdom traditions and spiritual paths reflect a common narrative, a way of seeing the world we called "One Fire, Many Flames" as previous interfaith leaders had used similar illustrations of a campfire where many leaders, even sitting by the same fire, will describe it differently to each other. Each has their own perspective on the fire and it will look differently to each person around it, so while there may be only 1 fire in the scene, every individual experience of it will be described differently, a way to look at how faiths and communities split and form new groups and ideas today.

Today we have 1000 AI tools creating generative worlds of all types: 3D assets, 2D images, worlds of words and digits that can come to life in many dimensions. Generative video, 3D and worldbuilding are coming into their own this year, 20 years after I sat down with the monks to see how we should be in relationship with this world, each other and with these emerging tools as we refine each other, and our work together.

Most of the monks I met over the last 2 decades have expressed no concern with AI or most anything called "artificial" by an incomplete language as there was not a division between what is digital or possibly an artifice and what is real or considered reality to us. There was no confusion; tech is no god - but it is an enabler of ego. This understanding of the role of technology in insight is a part of the non-dual awareness we practiced in monasteries from many traditions, understanding that we are not separate from these things that move between us, nor are we a product of them -- we are shaping each other while understanding that all of these things, at every level will contain multitudes. Whether those multitudes are considered "good" or "bad" will be determined by your life experience and your disposition within the experience, understanding new technologies as AI as not separate from who we are as a civilization -- a massive collective insight and wisdom experiment that's been going on for millennia.

This connected zone of shared insight is where life experience matters tremendously, not only to the tools and uses of #promptcraft and generative media; experience guides us where finding the "right" language and meaning, context and awareness meet these tools and creative potentials. Lived experience gives us language for artistic styles and schools, ways of thinking and being that are rarely exposed on screens or through traditional media outlets. Wisdom gives us a sense of how to use these experiences and words. Relatively few monks for example are on TikTok sharing insight daily, but many are already exploring how generative media tools in music, art, cultural creation and writing can meet gaps in wisdom, insight, translation and especially, human connection with capacities within all of us.

To improve generations of media, start by capturing your life

Humans are imaginative and extraordinary holders of insight, wisdom and knowledge -- and teach of these 3 inform how we ask and receive with our #generativemedia and #prompt engineering tools.

Insight feeds imagination. Wisdom drives thoughtful experimentation. Knowledge forms language and helps articulate vision. Finding language for complexity, juxtaposition and the messy experiences of life often comes from years of learning to articulate that which we do not see on our screens. The most interesting creative work is often informed by a real life experience with something extraordinary; Monastics have this access to extraordinary experience combined with decades of insight, wisdom and time to form a language of knowledge that is vast and comprehensive.

Today we can all be monastics of the new generative age

Libraries at Monasteries are tremendous wells of collected imagination, experimentation and vision captured by communities over generations. Now it's our turn to bring this way of working to everyone, in every corner of the world. How we work in the open matters to future generations, as well as to our own work today.

I will be writing more on the second 2 tips here on experimentation and expansion of your willingness in the coming weeks and you can experiment now by picking up the new Promptcraft book to try exercises and a wide variety of #AI creative media experiences, even with kids at home or in the classroom. Follow @EvoRealitycraft on YouTube for the latest tips videos and secret recipes too along with the daily updates to the Realitycraft groups on Meta & coming soon to the secret R&D testing group.

If you are seeking a speaker or workshop on #AIart and topics including #prompting #generativevideo #texttoimage #chatGPT #Midjourney #StableDiffusion related topics, my calendar is booking fast - message me directly to schedule your talk or workshop today. Promptcraft is the first in a series of books on Realitycraft, worldbuilding and how we relate to the creative work we share.