bap-de-la-bap

After some deliberation about how I spend my precious time, I've landed on a tough decision: Less DA, more RL. Much as I love being here, browsing amazing artwork, communicating with people who are no less amazing, I figure it would be to my benefit to access the site once a week rather than, well, all the time.

Those who know me well would argue that there is way too much RL in my life already, with a full-time job, writing would-be novels, and, lest I should forget, spring, which finally has made its way up here to the Almost-Arctic. But there is a time for everything. And the time, to be specific, is Monday, in the evenings - that is when I will be online in here, talking to friends, to all those I will probably be missing come Sunday.

No drama in this, and some may even wonder, why bother to mention it. But people are funny that way, they want their comments answered, their work visited and maybe commented upon, and their notes read. And sooner rather than later! Therefore this, and therefore I hope that you have accessed this mote of information and know what's up.

Yes, you.

See you on Monday!

I've had the pleasure of being invited to a collab with @KizukiTamura and here is the result. Great work there elaborating on my image!

The most exciting AI art generated today - and dare I say, the most enduring in this frenzy of fairies and cyborg girls - is the one that only starts once the prompt has done its work. Then sets in the tweaking, the photoshopping and the cut-and-pasting that will sometimes end in unique work comparable to photomanipulation in the way it draws on own or external resources to arrive at the desired result.

Today's Spot On focuses on one such work, a stringed-together animation by stumbler84 which made my hairs stand on end, not so much because of the content, as for its exquisite execution, the timing, and its prodigious amounts of cool. To me, the 'wow'-factor is much because of how the clip blindsides you by posing as an ordinary image. Until it starts to change ..

Far be it from me to spoil any of the fun to be had from viewing Loss Of Coziness, head over to stumbler84's pages and check it out for yourselves.

This spectacular view from the skywalk at Cabo Girao in Madeira is provided to us by EyeOfTheKat who used a telephoto lens looking almost 600 meters straight down, according to the caption.

The shot is unique not only in showing us our surroundings at an unusual angle, but also by allowing us to meditate on the structures of nature, as well as of man-made ones, and how seamlessly they seem to merge, as though the borders we assign to them are merely artificial.

Next there is a temporal element very strongly present, capturing both the motion of the waves as they clash below, and the longer cycles of ebb and flow, marked by the rim of algae on the rocks along the water's edge.

All great art speaks of many things, all at once, quite impatiently, tugging at our sleeves. Thank you for sharing this one, EyeOfTheKat.

Commenting on this evocative piece by IrisObscura I wrote the following:

'The cool thing about this image is how everyone seems to be looking toward the speaker, and several of them looking worried. There is nothing here of the randomness that often accompanies AI images, and that, in my opinion, is something of an achievement.'

Everyday Nudes showcases what IrisObscura is particularly good at: Bringing AI-generated content very close to the realm of the real, and the realm of the real, as we know, does not always count pixels. Here, the imperfection, the grainy cut-out-of-a-magazine quality, becomes the perfect canvas for the unexpected.

Enjoy with this very first Spot on mini-feature, an artist whose pages should be visited regularly by anyone looking for integrity in AI art.