Notes From Underground: Luke Nugent’s AI Editorials Fictionalize Subcultures

In chatting with the photographer, it turned more and more clear that Nugent by no means anticipated the explosive response to his AI work, which he initially approached as a private artistic experiment and with the light-heartedness of play. Given the surprising tidal wave of curiosity and enthusiasm in his Midjourney work, Nugent now inadvertently finds himself to be a spokesperson and defender of using AI in artwork. He jogged my memory of a musician whose biggest hit was written in ten minutes. Although he went out of his strategy to acknowledge different factors of view, he nonetheless stood his floor: “Everyone seems to be entitled to their very own opinion about AI, however you on the very least have to know it and have interaction with the discourse round it. If you happen to don’t transfer with these items, you’re going to be left behind.”

Harnessing the generative may of Midjourney is an train in visualization, unlocked via detailed description and creativeness. When creating his AI pictures, Nugent specifies the composition, the digicam angle, the pictorial fashion, the period, the atmosphere, every character, their facial expressions, their outfits, and the way they work together with each other. Although Nugent is one among many photographers experimenting with AI, his thoroughness units him aside, as does his implantation of meta tropes and motifs, such because the recurring presence of screens. “By combining totally different concepts, locations, and issues that usually wouldn’t go collectively, you open up a brand new world and aesthetic,” Nugent mentioned. “As soon as I’ve landed on a scene, I then assume, ‘What else is occurring right here?’” With a script shared solely between him and the generator, Nugent creates lots of of photographs, which he treats like a contact sheet. He extracts a variety, edits the colours and textures to resemble movie images extra intently, after which, by establishing a sequence, permits a story to unfold.

Nugent’s AI editorials first appeared on Instagram when social media was nonetheless weathering the storm of digital narcissism and aesthetic tragedy attributable to the trending app Lensa. For 3,99 {dollars}, Lensa makes use of AI know-how to show customers’ pictures and selfies into 50 “magic avatars”––its euphemism for digital characters which are hyper-Facetuned and over-sexualized. Whereas there was no scarcity of AI outrage already, the widespread use of Lensa introduced common folks nose to nose with the prejudices of AI, which carries the bias of its programmers––equating “magnificence” with lighter pores and skin, Westernized options, and cartoonishly buxom our bodies. For weeks, “magic avatars” assaulted feeds and prompted existential questions. At what level will our avatars turn into extra essential than ourselves? Hopefully not quickly. What is going to folks appear like once they can really appear like something? Hopefully not all the identical. All of this helped to make Nugent’s AI work, which celebrates various definitions of magnificence and the life of individuals on the margins, really feel extra vital.