Ink, acrylic, gesso, on wood panel
8 x 8 inches
2020
Info:
This painting is in a series of artworks I created in collaboration with an artificial intelligence system. The AI system is called GPT and was developed by the company OpenAI. The goal of GPT is to try to predict what words might come next when presented with an example of writing. To achieve this goal, a neural network was trained on on billions of examples of text written by people, and the network attempted to learn the structure of human language. To create the paintings I used a pen plotter, a kind of printer that's sort of like a robot arm, to write the AI generated phrases onto the artwork. The phrases on the paintings were generated by giving AI system this artist statement you are reading now about the work. It attempts to complete the the meaning of the artwork for me, generating phrases like,...[GPT output]
About the paintings:
I used the artist statement above to generate thousands of potential phrases for paintings, and then hand selected 100 phrases that I thought represented the most interesting ones. In that way, these paintings are both a reflection of GPT3 and GPT2-XL's perception of the internet it was trained on, as well as my voice and perspective.
The images themselves are all generative and made with a programming environment called Processing. I considered each phrase, and then wrote code to algorithmically arrange all of the lines and shapes surrounding each phrase. Some of the code I wrote precisely composed images leaving nothing to chance. Other images embraced randomness and emergent design, and are full of visual elements I didn't expect or control. Finally the images were physically realized using a pen plotter, which provides a great mix between programatic control and a tactile relationship with the painting surface.
About the book:
A book was produced in 2021 of all 100 paintings and is available via edcat in Europe and Printed Matter in North America. Additionally, 30 signed copies were made available on my personal shop.
Details:
Sterling Crispin, "GPT Paintings"RRose Editions, 2021
Edition of 200 copies
Softcover with Swiss Binding
202 pages
Risograph print on Clairbook paper by Maison Riso
Silkscreened cover
