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Artist Statement:
During the critique for this project, we were asked to choose 3 words that would describe it. My choice of words includes: fantasy, psychedelic, escapism. Because my images seem to be sort of abstract, let me break down the story I was trying to convey.
You start with the infinite loop, which shows a GIF of combined fantasy imagery where you seem to enter through a portal, which sucks you into the looping psychedelic fantasy landscape.
The second image includes a wavy glitch and shows a girl with her back facing toward the viewer, which is supposed to look like she "entered the portal" referenced in the GIF. It's supposed to look bright, colorful, and inviting. The wave effect features a lot of color and glitch without ruining the original image too much, she hasn't corrupted anything yet. She is one of two "characters" featured in my "story".
The third image is supposed to depict another "character", turning to look back at the first "character". I wanted it to look like you were now looking from the first "character's" POV. I made sure to include a lot of colorful glitch in order to "erase her identity" because I don't really want her to look like someone you could recognize, which will make sense later. The glitch added makes the background look colorful, but with the a lot of red hues and corruption to the visual imagery, it looks uninviting. She is the second "character" shown in the "story". I want the viewer to infer that she has already entered the portal, corrupting herself and may be beckoning the first "character" to join her. However, the coloring is supposed to signify that although it looks like you should join her, it won't have a good effect on you.
The fourth image features a landscape similar to the one in the infinitely looping GIF. It includes a psychedelic sunset and fantasy castle. There is not a lot of meaning here, just simply a landscape to fit the art style and help depict a journey. You can barely tell there is a castle there, it isn't until the sixth image where you figure out you're in the same place but can now fully see the destination. I loved that this one mostly focused on the view and the foreground, almost as if you are "focusing" on the beginning of the journey.
The fifth image shows a group of people adventuring toward one of the fantasy castles, nearing it shows a more gloomy and apocalyptic-like atmosphere. You can see a close-up of one of the fantasy castles, which are not exactly how they seem when you get closer to them. Many people are featured here, which the viewer should assume that they have also entered the portal and are on the same journey that the "character" has to complete as well. The point is that, many people are interested in going to these psychedelic fantasy castles.
The sixth image also features the same landscape included in the fourth image. It includes a psychedelic sunset and fantasy castle, except much more glitched. I loved how it corrupted the foreground, successfully conveying (to me) that they had crossed that section of land, corrupting it perhaps. It also is an interesting image because it almost puts everything except the final destination out of "focus", which almost eludes to my other theme of adventure/escapism.
The seventh image is an image of a woman overlaid with a mountainous landscape so that her face almost looks like the landscape itself. You can only see the landscape and not the features of the woman in this glitched version of the image. I personally think that this row of imagery includes a good transition from focusing on the landscapes, to diverting the focus to the "characters" now instead. Here, you are just supposed to see another corrupted landscape with a very clear destination (the pyramids). Almost as if you are still adventuring.
The eighth image shows a fantasy "character" wearing an extremely elaborate headdress and outfit. It includes multiple wings and a lot of technological elements. For this one I literally just searched: "psychedelic fantasy technology". She's supposed to embody the entire project, she is who I would envision you would meet in the fantasy castles. I loved that she looked like a colorful, technological, goddess. Her glitches turned out to make her much more corrupted, almost giving her an ominous feel with the dark RBG additions (which I definitely wanted to convey to the viewer). However, she still keeps her psychedelic theme, as the corruption gives her more shades of bright colored waves/blotches across her face, continuing to blur her identity. I didn't want the viewer to be able to see her (just like the first time she was referenced) and I almost didn't want the viewer to understand what exactly she is but that you could tell this "being" was special. The only thing I wanted to convey was that this was the same character who was beckoning the first one, but now in a much more powerful form. Meeting her, was definitely a negative thing, as the first "character" seems to lose herself so much more after meeting her, but .
The ninth image shows the same image of the woman with the landscape overlaid onto her face, except this time you can actually see her features surrounded by colorful corruption. My only regret here is that I didn't make this image look more "negative" but, the "character" gets corrupted willingly, so she wasn't supposed to look like she was having a terrible experience (in reference to her facial expression as it looks almost peaceful). It is supposed to be the point in the "story" where the character from the second image effectively loses themself and becomes entirely corrupted, like the other "character" that came before her. She looks accepting of her reality, because it was seemingly what she wanted.
Included in the row.
This row includes two glitched images of psychedelic material mixing and corrupting, which is just alluding to the fact that the two characters have been corrupted. The lighter mixture is actually supposed to represent the character in the second image and the darker mixture is supposed to represent the character who had already been corrupted, who we can now recognize as the goddess. Finally, this row also includes a home-made GIF of the two "characters" holding hands, effectively representing their corruption. The images flash through all kinds of bright colors and then finally flash to a darker image, representing the breakage of their "identities". I view it as the GIF happened, forming them into the two materials each on the corresponding side of "character" they represent. This image is supposed to be symbolic in a way, with them dawning a peaceful expression almost as if she was ready to be corrupted or that the two are happy and prepared to be corrupted together. I loved that the first "character's" face is cut out of the GIF, hopefully connecting the viewer to the fact that it is the same "character" they were shown with their back facing them because in both you cannot see her face.
Included in the row.
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Fantasy: I chose this word to describe the overall theme of the images I was generating in the AI generators. When we first started working with glitch and AI, I was reminded of video games and their themes. I know that AI can generate amazing real-life centered images, especially portraits and basic landscapes. But, I wanted to see what type of images would be generated if I was trying to make the characters look drawn/animated/3D modeled. The characters in a fantasy land would not resemble real-life people or actual physical beings (reference to the woman with a "face" of the mountains). Plus, in a video game, they would also be wearing colorful, intricate, special outfits and hairstyles (reference to the technological woman wearing an elaborate headdress, and also the women with colored hair and clothes). Since my overall subtle theme is escapism, I wanted their faces to be pixel-sorted, or blurred, out of existence. There is no "main character" featured in any of these images, but more so a thought of what people would look like living in a distant, unreachable, technological/fantasy, world.
Psychedelic: I chose this word to describe the overall art style of the images, including both sometimes the base image and the glitched images. My goal was to make it look like as you continue to look at the images, the characters seem to "lose themselves" more and more. You become less able to see and decipher who or what they are and where they may be or what they may be wearing. The colors and the
Escapism: I chose this word because it describes the topic I was working with while trying to create this "story" of images and "characters". The overall idea was that it features a main "character" or an entity who is being beckoned to a fantasy land in which she willingly seeks and sucks herself into effectively destroying herself and becoming corrupted material. I specifically chose the word escapism, because to me the story depicts a person who is WILLINGLY seeking out fantasy and WANTS connection in the fantasy land instead of looking for those things in the real world.
I was reminded about the topic of video games when we were first getting into glitch, and I was thinking about how glitches relate back to me. I realized that a lot of people come to video games for the immersive fantasy element, in which sometimes people even become too addicted and use them as a means of escapism. (...Which was supposed to be subtly represented in the image of a group of people walking in the technological landscape toward the castle, allowing the viewer to infer that the "character" we are focusing on isn't the only one who is affected by this). This particular version is in reference to my life, in which I used to feel how the first "character" feels. There have been times where I look to video games willingly as a means of escapism. They give you the ability to adventure in which you traverse a variety of landscapes, effectively sucking you into their colorful and immersive world (which is why I described it as "psychedelic", as it was supposed to be visually inviting and have an "unreal" feeling. Some people feel as if you can relate to the characters and wish they were there with them, almost as if they are beckoning you (like the goddess "character" does to the main "character").
This is supposed to be a subtle commentary on what happens when you let yourself participate in escapism. You sometimes effectively lose connection to yourself and identity and the connection to the real world, which was represented in all the glitching of the faces and landscapes. I wanted to represent my willing participation of escapism into my favorite hob
WIP:
All of these images (except one, the first image) were AI generated and glitched by me. This included a process of both finding themes to generate and actually generating and glitching the images. Most of the images follow a mixed glitched approach which includes applying pixel sorting to the image first and then using Audacity to give the glitch more colors using Reverb, Echo, and Delay. Some images just include multiple layers of the Audacity glitches.
Original Images:
Semi-Glitched Images:
Images that have at least one glitch applied to them but are not the finished version. Some images in the final do have only one glitch applied to them, but I did not repeat those below. Pixel sorting is my favorite effect that we got to play with during this project, so I wanted to include them.
Images Used in Infinite Loop:
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