“Celestial Dreams 67” (Morph image)
1/1: Please introduce yourself.
Morph: Hey, I'm Morph_VGArt (or just Morph for short). I'm an AI-collaborative artist with a focus on surrealism.
1/1: What art have you been working on lately?
Morph: Lately, I've been exploring the face as a canvas. I've been using AI to create photorealistic portraits of women, men, and creatures blended with real and imaginary materials.
1/1: Can you describe your workspace and how it influences your art?
Morph: My workspace is just my computer. I sit here for my work-from-home day job so it just comes naturally. My physical workspace is just a nice gaming chair my wife got me for my birthday and my two monitors, mouse, and keyboard setup. There's an amount of junk on and off of my desk though – I guess I'm a bit cluttered. :P
1/1: Can you describe a typical day in your artistic practice, including any rituals or habits?
Morph: I have garnered a pretty good circle of artists like me that inspire me daily, so I usually look for ideas and twists on things based on stuff I see. I use ChatGPT and MuseAI a lot to think of concepts and find interesting ways to express myself. I talk to them all day long to put prompts together or find variations on prompts I already have.
1/1: What draws you to AI art? Any favorite tools?
Morph: I discovered AI art a little bit over a year and a half ago using a website called NightCafe Studio. I instantly fell in love and got such a huge dopamine rush creating all of the things I have in my head that my hands could never hope to put on paper. These days, I use Midjourney primarily and still get that same rush, but I've refined my tastes enough by now that I go hunting for the creations that truly are noteworthy.
1/1: What makes a great AI art prompt? Does it take much tinkering to get what you’re looking for?
“A Taste of Freedom” (Morph image)
Morph: I've written a few tutorials about my prompt approach on Twitter actually. I've found that as the text-to-image platforms get updated, the default quality of any prompt output is increasing. Due to that, a less-is-more approach seems to be my go to now. I try to find the most impactful keywords that don't share definitions with other visual looks. From there, I find antonyms that I use as negative prompts to really push out what I'm going for.
1/1: Despite this technology, there's still less interesting work coming out than I would've guessed. Do you agree with this? Thoughts?
Morph: 100%. I think that's to be expected though because it takes a lot of experimentation and community feedback to really pursue unique concepts and art styles. Since we're not creating with our hands, our canvas itself has an opinion on how things come out. You have to be able to figure out how to communicate your ideas into it before you truly start to get your own vision from it. It's easier said than done, and I think the majority of people still don't even know much about this stuff yet, let alone having put in over a year of time experimenting.
1/1: What’s your dream AI art project with technology that hasn’t quite arrived yet?
Morph: It'll be here before we know it, but text-to-video at the same or better quality than where something like Midjourney is at currently will be a game changer. I privately write and record music and I'd love to be able to debut it in an AI-generated video. I know there have been a lot of advancements like Zeroscope, and there are examples of music videos made with AI, but they're still too weird or elementary in quality for me to devote a large amount of time to it. So I'm just waiting till it's good enough.
“Skeledelic” (Morph image)
1/1: What would you say to AI art skeptics?
Morph: Skeptics are fine, everyone is entitled to an opinion. In fact, I know a lot of AI art skeptics are traditional and/or digital artists themselves who feel threatened by the surge of this technology and the way that artists' work have been unethically appropriated to train a lot of the models that have come out. I empathize with how they feel and I have my own opinions on some of these things that I either agree or disagree with. My take is that AI systems are just new tools for artists to play with. As long as you're not making violent threats at people, you can say your piece and live your truth.
1/1: Are there any specific works of art (music, literature, film, etc.) that inspire or have significant meaning to you in your artistic practice?
Morph: I have a great deal of respect for hip-hop artists from the 80s and 90s who paved the way for true lyricism, but my AI-art doesn't really focus on music. Maybe one day. From a visual aspect though, I am admittedly rather basic in my knowledge and appreciation for the masters. I'm still eagerly learning about art history and movements that continue to surprise me. In exploring surrealism though I'd say Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali are my first inspirations from a conceptual standpoint.
1/1: How do you come up with titles for your work?
Morph: With a lot of self-doubt! I kid, but I tend to come up with too many ideas and that makes it hard to choose sometimes. The good thing is I sometimes can ask ChatGPT/MuseAI to help me think of stuff just by describing the artwork. Lately, I've been doing a lot of work with visualizing idioms. That stuff isn't released yet as I am applying at places to find sponsorships.
1/1: What draws you to NFTs and how do you see them as different from traditional art markets?
Morph: What drew me to NFTs in the beginning is that I was also dabbling with trading crypto, so the opportunity to make art and potentially sell it to collectors in the market, with relative ease, was a no-brainer for me. NFTs also allowed anybody old or new to dive right in and find success.
In my case, I think I juuust missed the big NFT craze that was there in 2021, but it was awesome to know that collectors were basically lining up on some very popular market places to bid on artwork – and some of it was made with AI. While I know that nowadays there are websites that make it easy to create physical prints of your work in exchange for some of the profit, the climb to actually be a noteworthy artist in those circles takes years of dedication. I tip my hat to those who have done it or are doing it that way today.
“Free Your Mind” (Morph image)
1/1: Is there a particular approach you think works best with NFTs and AI art? Do you think in terms of collections?
Morph: I'm still finding the answer to what works “best.” I've done 1/1 pieces, small collections, big collections, open editions, limited editions, burn to redeem, and some other types – and I didn't see a big difference in what worked or didn't work. The answer is more about how you market your art online, who you know in the space, and a bit of good luck on timing.
1/1: Who are some of your favorite artists in the NFT space?
Morph: In no particular order, and really for so much more than just the art they create, I like:
- Blac.ai
- Hylates
That was hard. So many more artists that I appreciate!
1/1: What are you working on next?
Morph: Well I actually have about six collections locked and loaded that I am shopping around for my next phase. I've knocked on some doorbells, peeked through a few windows. If no one answers, you might see some of those in the next month or two. For now, I'm hanging out on Twitter and putting out more samples of the faces you've seen me do lately.
“Blueberry Allure” (Morph image)