Closer is inspired by the play “Far Away” (2000) by Caryl Churchill in which animal
armies have teamed up with human factions. The process of creating this digital collage with DALL·E , an AI system that generates imagery from language, entails my operating as an Art Director with an aleatory AI system. I direct and push the flow of chance to create surprising outcomes I never could make by hand. Then I act as my own cleanup intern: I manage, shift, and weld objects together. I end up with a vintage 1845 Struwwelpeter (a dark and moral tale for children) mixed with a 1930s agitprop lithography technique. I’m surprised by a Francis Bacon face or a seahorse that appears as if stained for a scientific slide. I get to know DALL·E, and it gets to know me—my image making tendencies, predilections, and wants. This process offers up questions of instinct, fusion, hybridity, synthesis. The art historical and design database I carry around in my head is my ‘expert tool’ in this collaboration.