The GAN Vogh Space (Episode II)
A conversation with AI artists Maneki Neko and Ren AI
I'm usually curious, and as for the artists, I've always been fascinated to know the story behind their work.
looking at Maneki's work I was surprised by the term she used to define her art, "anti-minimalist", she even had a collection titled “minimalist nightmares", haha!
- Well, I didn't realize that there was a term for maximalism-, she told me, -but I was pretty familiar with minimalism. And I've always been fascinated with patterns and intricate shapes and colors. I mean, just my whole life, and I guess I kind of translated it into my AI art preference-.
I try to find those little patterns and things that other people would miss, I like to just completely fill the canvas with details.
Ren had a totally different style, he came from traditional painting, his grandfather, his aunt, and his father were already painters, and he decided to enter the IA world to challenge his painting colleagues.
The first thing I wanna say, he claimed,-is that I came into AI art specifically because my group of traditional painters I was in contact with, despised it.
Yeah, that´s the spirit”, I thought.
Whilst there were indeed some congruencies in their personal trajectories, including their mutual reliance on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to grow their art careers, their approaches to the craft were quite divergent.
Maneki had previously delved into digital media, having acquired the requisite expertise through formal education, but was dissuaded from pursuing a career in art due to the ease of infinite reproduction of digital files.
In contrast, Ren had undergone the tribulations of attempting to sell his art in traditional exhibition settings, as well as producing commissioned pieces, yet his endeavors had met with much agitation.
If not for the advent of AI and the subsequent emergence of NFTs, they would conceivably have found themselves engaged in other pursuits.
Maneki is a software engineer, and she decided to take that path as it provided her with more economic stability, her family's economy of origin had not been very stable and that's why she decided to take that path.
I grew up with a single mother and watching her struggle to keep, you know, keep us clothed and housed got me to decide that I needed to be able to support myself financially, and while I loved and really wanted to pursue art, it just didn't seem like the practical path.
Maneki has an uncanny ability to summon nature's essence through the vivacious and seemingly implausible hues used in her artwork. The pieces transport viewers to a realm of fantasy, conjuring images of mythical beings amidst their midst.
It's worth mentioning that some of Maneki's artwork creates a remarkable three-dimensional impression, causing the characters to leap off the screen. These ephemeral figures emanate an ethereal, futuristic vibe, akin to that of ancient nymphs who have traversed time and space to visit us.
-Some of my artworks are named after flowers, I looked the Greek myths to try to find something, because there are nymphs, and they do have names, but they weren't quite what I was looking for. So I just kind of made my own, basically.
-So the whole idea is that each of them kind of focuses on their time of the year or the type of flora that they guard and protect and help thrive-.
One of the main sources of inspiration for Ren is the Italian Renaissance, (he is also Italian) although he admits that staying true to a single style when using AI is very difficult.
You know, working with AI, it's really hard to just stick to one thing, one topic, one style.
-The word Renaissance is where my first Twitter name Ren AI (Renaissance) came from, I was like, taking my first steps from my traditional art that was really inspired and influenced by the Renaissance masters based on my studies and my personal history family-.
I asked him for a Renaissance artist that for him was particularly relevant and the chosen one was Tiziano, the great Tiziano.
-He was very academic and he followed very much the rules of that period, so it was a way for me to try to stick as much as possible to where I came from. And then be able to build upon that with a solid base-.
Ren's work is not hyper-realistic, but rather, it has a fleshy texture that imbues his pieces with a sense of tangibility that draws the viewer in, I feel I could be there, inside of the artwork just in an instant. His art is melancholic, evocative of lost memories and places that he has never been to but has always longed for.
-Do memories mean something special to you?-. I asked him.
- Yeah. Actually, I have a collection that I released, which is called lost memories-, he said, -and I think you pretty much hit the bull's eye with that sentence because what I tried to express, especially on that collection with my work overall is a sense of being in places that maybe we dreamt of or we wanted a lot to be in or we longed for, but not necessarily we experienced in our lives-.
So this also is a way for me to kind of travel with my imagination and try to be there, imagine how life would look like. It's a bit of a way of daydreaming.
In my observation, it is truly intriguing to witness the notable prevalence of Renaissance-inspired themes in both the NFT realm and the world of AI-generated art.
The influence of this historical period seems to have left an unforgettable mark on the creative minds of today, as evidenced by the impact of illustrious figures like Cozomo de Medici - a nod to the renowned banker, Cosimo de Medici, who once reigned supreme as one of Europe's most dominant and influential individuals.
Moreover, the visual components, stylistic nuances, and overall aesthetics of numerous artists who leverage the power of AI technology in their creations unmistakably reflect the artistic trends and traditions of this period.
That´s why I asked them both if they thought we were experiencing kind of a rebirth of the spirit of the Renaissance.
I think it's a very complex answer, said Ren, because we like to say we are in a new Renaissance. So with all the new tools and a newfound expressivity, it may seem so, but on the other hand, we are also seeing much more scams and much more use of art as means for doing some quick buck.
-So I think that we are not headed in the previous enlightenment direction of the Renaissance, It's not that spirit-.
-I think though that it might be kind of a renaissance-, Maneki replied, -and that it opens up the ability to be creative and expressive to a lot of people who didn't have that opportunity before for whatever, you know, financial or physical reasons, they couldn't create art-.
So I do think that there's an aspect of a Renaissance in that aspect It kind of takes away the barriers to a lot of people being able to participate in something that seemed elite or, you know, just inaccessible before.
As I told them about my views, I drew parallels between the Renaissance epoch and our present era. In my opinion, one of the primal driving forces of the Renaissance was the revolution in communication and the dissemination of knowledge through the advent of movable type printing, which enabled a surge in literacy and access to information.
Fast forward to our time, the game-changing technologies of the internet and blockchain have been pivotal in enabling a similar information boom, whereby knowledge and data are now readily available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, in limitless quantities. Indeed, we are living in an age where the volume of information has exploded exponentially, and the potential for learning and discovery is greater than ever before.
Both Ren and Maneki are members of AIIA, Artificial Intelligence Infused Art, a collective of artists with the goal of sharing AI art with the world and sharing their knowledge openly with other artists. And then came the big question, what about AI art?
It's interesting to see how that's making a lot of the AI artists who have been trying to say that, you know, using AI models is not stealing from other artists be frustrated in seeing that their styles if they're popular, are being copied.
-But on the same token, it encourages us all to move a little faster and not sit on our laurels if we've come up with something that we like, you can't just sit there anymore, you have to keep moving and keep exploring and I think that's a good thing-.
The more that we explore, then the more innovation comes out of this and the more unique it is because, honestly, it's hard to come up with anything new at this point, as so much has already been done.
- I simply don't care if people tell me, you're not an artist-, Ren replied, -I have confidence in my artwork because I'm not producing, like, 1 click AI art. I mean, if I were producing 1 click AI art, there would be a lot of thought behind it before pushing that 1 button-.
It's the same old story, people telling you things like “My 2 years old kid could have created that, and ok it may be, but guess what? he didn´t.
At the end of the day, the most important for me is the vision and the artistic intent that's behind it, so never mind the tool that you use. I think It is a very shallow, and very stupid argument against AI art.
In Ren´s opinion, Copyright is one of the meaning problems with AI, a very different view from the one Maneki has.
You know, I personally feel that the idea of copyright is dead, she said, because, with digital art, it's just way too easy to make, you know, a perfect copy of anything.
-People are going to copy each other. You cannot help it. If you see something, it's going to influence you. You know, and you're going to reproduce you're going to be influenced by that somehow-.
Ultimately, the consensus among us three was that the narrative encompassing the artist is the defining factor that sets them apart. Any individual may be capable of replicating a piece with impeccable precision, but that does not equate to embodying the artist's essence. It may be possible for others to mimic your technique, but they will never truly be Ren AI or Maneki Neko.
Subsequently, we delved into more profound and elevated topics, and amidst our tête-à-tête, the notion of art's potency emerged. Its ability to assist us in navigating the complexities of life, creating a world we aspire to inhabit or reminisce about, and providing solace during moments of existential crisis was unanimously acknowledged.
"Art will set us free?" I posed the question, and without hesitation, the three of us assented that art demolishes boundaries and liberates the psyche and spirit.
AI art came to me in a period of life where I was kind of having some tough times, Maneki said. So being able to produce art just constantly was just really helpful for me to get through that period.
While we were talking about all this I thought I would ask them something that I often reflect on, do artists need to go through moments of suffering to create?.
-I don't think it's necessary to suffer to create art, but I do think that that does inspire a lot of art-, said Maneki, -it is true that when you are through hard times you need an outlet for those emotions or some way to transform them into something else-.
I think it's more about the contrast, some kind of tension between 2 things, pointed out Ren, tension can also be a drive to move forward, and It can spark more ideas and more feelings to express through art. So art would be our way to release the tension.
Yeah. I think is a good way to put it, Maneki replied, because, I mean, there were different times in my life when there wasn't dark and I still have this real need, just need to be creative, so yeah. I mean, I think that wasn't suffering, but there was definitely tension there. I think that's a good way to put it.
Yeah that´s true I said, and I also would add that going through hard times pushes you to find something beyond, finding a way to see reality from a different perspective, push reality into another level.