Generated Love
Generated from large datasets of existing images, artificial intelligence composes new pictures based on custom and unique prompts.
Collaboration with Mike Stumbras
Imagining an alternate world
“/imagine” is the prompt used to start an Artificially Intelligent program to create an image. Inspired by alternate fiction (also called counterfactualism), I wondered what the globalized world would have looked like without homophobia and what our objects would look like if it had celebrated gay culture. These plates are generated by AI to fictionalize historic blue-and-white Chinese pottery to celebrate gay male romance. No image is repeated twice, and an open-edition series.
A limited number of lesbian imagery have been made with vintage Limoge porcelain.
Key Words
AI software utilizes prompts to create images. Certain words and phrases are used in many different ways to create more intentional and exacting images. While words like “two men” will steer this program to search for literal representations of what I am looking for, I add subjective language to investigate how a non-human source would process it by using phrases like: “two gay men in love”.
Material History
I have researched other artists that fictionalize symbols and culture such as Howard Kottler, and appreciate the use of ready-made objects to underscore the feeling of an “almost” reality. The materials I use are porcelain blanks and custom decals. Academic writing of this is in the Summer/Fall issue of Studio Potter, titled “Our Obsession with Reality”.
In 2024, Generated Love was exhibited at the Stonewall National Museum and Archives, the United States’ largest LGBT+ repository for queer history. Featured in the exhibit were four Howard Kottler plates from the “American Gothicware” series.
