Drawing source material from digital scans of the physical world in addition to the Internet, re-formatted as traditional landscape and portrait paintings, Jxmie Timms introduces a body of work featuring paintings generated by Artificial Intelligence.
In the depths of the digital age where the internet is infinite and rarity obsolete, my work is concerned with discovering the source of human expression and creativity, through a new hybrid form of contemporary painting. The images generated are both abstract and representational as the relationship between the two features of analog and digital oscillate back and forth. With elements of traditional media synthesized with scientific computation, the new works become something else entirely, depending on and informing one another as a uniquely human-machine collaboration.
The focus of my work is with the use of artificial intelligence as an instrument in augmenting the creative process, by leveraging the latest advances in science and technology to generate new forms, deeply philosophical and cultural in nature. My process is both additive and subtractive; manually and computationally adding and removing elements until only those essential to convey a work’s meaning remain.
My interest is in reexamining the structure of the machine and reducing it to its rudimentary elements. In its most basic form, a computer system is comprised of four components: input, output, processing, and memory/storage. For the input, I define a certain set of parameters or rules, only to be broken by the machine. The first variable is the “Form” which is the composition and aesthetic intelligence. Referring to modern images, it starts with defining the visual layout of the image. The second variable is the “Function” which is what the work is meant to express viscerally and emotionally. Referring to art history, I appropriate brush strokes and technical renderings in addition to colors and expressed moods.
From there a set of pre-selected images are used as data sets and the training happens online, where I leverage the latest AI tools and write a script to connect to neural networks to train and generate new images. The output is a set of computationally processed images generated by deep learning from the machine, and AI becomes a kinetic force in the creative process. After filtering through the machine’s output, akin to listening to noise and scanning different channels to tune into the right frequency, the original result is communicated or new unexpected messages are discovered.
A feedback loop is created as I output the chosen images to traditional media (pencil and pen on paper, acrylic and oil on canvas, etc., etc.) to augment the message and additionally execute analog processing by both extracting and building shape and color. From there, I re-scan and digitize the analog in order to continue the digital to analog, analog to digital conversion to find the desired result, the human spirit.
Longevity is important in my work, particularly as many of my processes will become obsolete, and yet the corresponding components are mathematically linked to a digital form and using blockchain technology, the work will be stored on the internet, infinitely into the future. The work is also rendered on traditional media and stored offline in the physical form of paintings and drawings as a way to connect the past, present and future and continue a discourse with art history. Yet ultimately the work is meant to exist in the present moment, and not ephemeral like the world we exist in. Both of the features of analog and digital — act as a bridge between the dimensions.
Images Courtesy of Jxmie Timms