Curated Conversation:
“More Than Ever” by Infiniteyay

About the Artist:

Infiniteyay is an artist and creative director exploring AI and its capabilities for world building. As a lifelong traditional artist that found a career in design he embraced AI tools with enthusiasm, integrating them into his creative process. He discovered a deep connection to the tools and became enthralled with their ability to translate his imagination into visuals. His work has been shown in galleries and exhibits internationally and he is continuing to push the boundaries of how AI tools can bring his wildest dreams into reality.

About the Collection “More Than Ever”

“More Than Ever" is a concise collection that ponders the era of overabundance ushered in by rapid advancements in AI and technology. It explores the chaotic wonder and the profound challenges of navigating a world saturated with stimuli, questioning how we will adapt, escape, and find balance in a landscape where our preconceived notions of life are constantly disrupted. "More Than Ever" illuminates the complexities of this era, highlighting the myriad emotions and perspectives as we grapple with the paradox of infinite possibilities and the overwhelming challenge of managing them.

THE INTERVIEW

An: What inspired the concept of “More Than Ever”?

Infiniteyay: The concept of “More Than Ever” was inspired by my observations of the overwhelming abundance brought on by rapid advancements in AI and technology. As I explored the imaginative possibilities in my previous collection "New Realities", I became hyper aware of another side of this incredible technology: the saturation of art, content, and information that are inundating our lives. This collection reflects on the chaotic beauty and the profound challenges of navigating a world where stimuli are boundless, questioning how we adapt and find balance amidst this paradox of infinite possibilities and the overwhelming task of managing them.

A: What is the significance of this collection, and how does it relate to or differentiate from your previous collections, including your recent one “New Realities”?

I: The pieces in this collection are some of the most detailed and refined pieces I’ve ever worked on. During the 6+ months of working on “New Realities” I learned so many new technical skills and gained a much deeper perspective on how and why I create art. As soon as I finished “New Realities” I started applying everything I learned to these new pieces that make up “More Than Ever”. I have a difficult time taking a break and constantly want to evolve and push myself to the next level. These pieces felt like a revelation I had to create and share after coming out of the rabbit hole that was “New Realities”

Since I’ve started working with AI the primary goal with most of my collections has been to dive as deep into the models as possible to see what unique realms and visuals I can uncover. AI image models can generate almost anything you can think of but what I aim to do is try to capture what feels to me like the middle of the latent space. The space inbetween all its training data, all the styles, cultures, places, topics, etc. I’m surely guiding my way through it with my own unique perspective but essentially I try to capture that totally wild middle realm where everything meets. “More Than Ever” is me diving further into this exploration with a new level of clarity, detail and focus.

More succinctly, both "New Realities" and "More Than Ever" explore the transformative impact of AI and technology on our perception and experience of the world. They delve into the interplay between human imagination and technological advancements, highlighting the profound changes these bring to our lives. While "New Realities" more so celebrates the imaginative potential of AI, "More Than Ever" critically reflects on the complexities and difficulties of managing this new, overstimulated world.

A: How do you develop your unique and distinct visual style that stands out from other AI art?

I: I’ve been creating art my whole life. From drawing, painting, and making home videos as a kid to designing and being a creative director for some of the world’s most well known brands, I’ve never stopped exploring and developing my creative skills. I think as with anything, continually pushing yourself, learning, trying, and showing up everyday is the best way to grow and develop whatever it is you’re trying to do.

When it comes to AI art, since I discovered it over 3 years ago I’ve been creating and exploring with it literally everyday. Constantly learning new tools and experimenting with new complex processes and creating to uncover what I resonate with most. I also continually observe what my peers in the space are creating and try to find opportunities where a unique perspective can shine through.

I also try to create things that really bring out, or are born from, unique personal things and inspirations. Injecting deeply personal perspectives and inspiration into your work can surely help on your journey to develop a unique voice. For example, say you wanted to put a chair in your piece. You could opt to use a well known chair like the Eames Lounge Chair. Everyone knows this chair, it’s beautiful and will surely connect to a wide audience. However a more unique path would be to reflect on a chair from your past, like maybe a chair your parents used to have. Maybe it was an old blue recliner that had a tear on the side and they used to eat dinner and rest their plate on the arm of the chair. That’s surely a more unique visual to pursue.

A: How do you think your personal background has influenced the themes and aesthetics in your art?

I: As mentioned above, incorporating aspects from my life into my work is a key approach of mine. For example I’ve spent the better part of the last 8 years or so living with my family throughout Asia. You can absolutely find a large variety of Japanese and Thai aesthetic influences in my work because of this. Another one, I grew up and lived in the suburbs of Florida until my early 20s and you can definitely find many suburban themes throughout my collections.

I also think my lifelong pursuit of art and career in design has a major influence on my work. I have over 15 years of professional experience building brands, design systems, moodboards, planning and executing photoshoots, and looking at endless sources for inspiration. I’m very grateful for the unique perspective and set of skills this allows me to bring to my work.

A: How do you incorporate the myriad emotions and complexities of this era into your artwork?

I: Living with ADHD I’ve long experienced the constant flow of thoughts and ideas racing around in my head often making it hard to concentrate. Somehow I feel this has prepared me for this era of overabundance and stimuli. It almost feels like the world is catching up to the craziness that’s always been going on in my head. I’ve also always created art that is more on the hyper detailed side of things. Being able to create a piece with many layers of extreme detail to get lost in I feel allows me to express a large variety of emotions and topics within a single piece. Reflecting the wild overwhelming nature of our current era.

A: As a lifelong traditional artist, how do you balance traditional techniques with AI tools in your work?

I: The pieces in this collection for example are made using a very complex process with many steps that I’m not sure I would have developed had I not been creating art and doing design for as long as I have. I still use Photoshop extensively to create and mask layers in my pieces. Having a background in drawing and painting has also greatly helped in terms of developing compositions and working with color. There is also a massive curation effort done in my collections. I’ll create many thousands of images and manually sort through them all to find the strongest images to work with as a base. Having experience in curation and editing photos immensely helps with this step.

A: What specific AI tools do you use in your creative process, and how have they enhanced your ability to translate conception into visuals?

I: I have been using Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL·E 2 primarily for the past few years paired with various upscalers to finish pieces. From those finished pieces I have started training my own models and have basically created a feedback loop of pieces created by my models to train new ones. Scenario has been a great tool to simply train models with. Also this past year I’ve been working with Magnific which is a creative AI enhancing upscaler that allows me to reach insane levels of detail. Photoshop’s inpainting tool is also a key tool I use for fine tuning details in my pieces. One of AI’s key strengths is in being able to quickly bring out ideas to life. But through all these various tools I’m able to truly refine the ideas and take pieces to new levels that aren’t possible with a simple image generator’s output.

A: How do you envision the future of art in relation to AI and technology and what's next for you? 

I: I think we’ll start to see more interactive art that utilizes AI to create mind blowingly unique experiences. As AI tools rapidly improve and become faster we’ll have immediate real time beautiful visuals and video that can be generated based on real world inputs like emotions, sound, touch, etc. Paired with AR & VR tools it’s going to be a whole new layer to life that is hard to even fathom what it will be like. I’ll continue to try and keep up with it all and create experiences that hopefully bring a little magic and wonder into life. In addition to the art world I'm also working on developing projects in the creative industry and design world that make use of the AI tools and the artists that use them.

“More Than Ever," featuring a collection of 1/1 pieces, each with a reserve price of 0.1 ETH, is coming to SuperRare on Monday, August 12.