Surreality, is an AI powered art movement that is similar to Surrealism inevitable?
When I see an image like a Mona Lisa with the head of a cat, I often think that looks like Surrealism or Dadaism. AI-generated art has not definitively started a new movement in Surrealism. In fact it is not definitively art at all.? However, I am not alone being reminded of the Surrealist movement due to some notable similarities and its potential to push artistic boundaries in ways reminiscent of Surrealism.
There are several key parallels between AI art and Surrealism:
1. Automatism: Like Surrealism, AI art is often described as automatic and disembodied, operating in the space between Large Language Model and image. This echoes the Surrealist technique of automatic writing and drawing.
2. Dream-like qualities: AI-generated images are frequently described as dream-like or hallucinatory, much like Surrealist artworks. The term "hallucinating dream machine" has even been used to describe AI systems. In fact, the hallucinations are often among the most interesting results when running a prompt multiple times. And the AIs are lazy, when they can, they draw people with their eyes closed. That can help communicate “dream state” to the viewer.
3. Challenging traditional art forms: Both AI art and Surrealism push the boundaries of conventional artistic expression and challenge our perceptions of reality and beauty. Right now, most experts reject AI as art, it is not allowed in most galleries. But if you know anything about art history, the newbie has been shunned and rejected almost every time, until they are not. And, we laid a huge foundation for accepting this as an art form; every sci fi, war, global disaster film has a huge amount of CGI. Most of us have thousands of hours viewing imaginary, digital images.
4. Exploration of the unconscious: While Surrealists sought to tap into the human unconscious, AI art engages with a kind of "collective conscious" formed by vast datasets. AI does not (yet) have conscious awareness. So perhaps it is fair to think of it as unconscious. As of January 2024 over 17 million people have visited MidJourney, the AI image tool that created the Cata Lisa image. That’s a start at some form of collective pooling of ideas.
However, there are important distinctions to consider:
1. Intentionality: Surrealism was a deliberate movement with a manifesto and shared philosophy among artists. AI art, while provocative, lacks this unified artistic intent. But if there are digital creators of content interested in developing a shared philosophy they could probably get Perplexity, or ChatGPT to generate a manifesto toot sweet.
2. Human vs. machine creativity: The role of the artist and intentionality in AI art is more ambiguous compared to traditional art movements. That said, these tools are providing the human creator more control with each generation. MidJourney, for instance, has an option to allow the creator to use their own preferences, (to some extent), instead of the hive minds.
While AI art shares some characteristics with Surrealism, it may be more accurate to view it as a new mode of image production rather than a direct continuation or revival of Surrealism. AI art raises unique questions about authorship, creativity, and the relationship between human and machine in art creation. It is probable that teamwork makes the dream work will prevail and human/computer teams will be accepted. We have been here with mainframes and plotters and then, gasp, photoshop.
As the field of AI art continues to evolve, human/machine teams will spawn new artistic movements or genres. However, at present, it's more of an emerging technological approach to art-making that draws comparisons to Surrealism due to its ability to generate unexpected, dream-like imagery, rather than a defined Surreality movement. But hey, they can draw fairly realistic hands at this point.
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In my personal exploration of AI image generation I have used the tools to create images that resemble impressionism, expressionism, Fauvism, (my favorite so far), and so on. I am about to begin a study of using the principles of Surrealism to address the issues and cultural challenges of our world today. If you are a like minded digital artist, please message me.
I want to thank these resources for helping me wrap my brain around the topic. All links were working as of 07/11/2024: