Steven Ryan
United States
AI Art experience
Personal experience
Unexpected thought
Description
This is one in a series of eight images that I have been working on that are inspired by Aldous Huxley's book, "Brave New World". The series is going to be displayed at the Design Museum of Chicago in November of this year (2024). This particular image is a reflection on the SOMA pill itself and the notion that taking the drug SOMA is preferable to experiencing any negative emotions or dissatisfaction, emphasizing the importance of superficial happiness over genuine feelings.
Process
I've worked in the design industry for over 30 years as a traditional designer / executive director, a generative artist, an entrepreneur, a professor, and many other things. One of the challenges I'm consistently draw to is the challenge of efficiency in our processes. For that reason, I consistently return to the opportunities that code-based / parametric generative tools have to offer — e.g., Processing, Python, openFrameworks, a broad range of 3D environments, TouchDesigner, and now GenAI tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Flux, KREA, Magnific, OpenAI. For this particular project I have been pushing myself leverage these tools as much as possible, and do as much as possible on my own.
Tools
The underlying imagery is bring generated using a combination of Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Flux. Additional detail and resolution is achieved via Magnific. The SOMA pill content is then layered on the imagery by way of a custom Processing app (JAVA) that I wrote in order to extract the color data from the image at the pixel level, and then apply that color data to child layers within an svg file. I'm applying similar but different approaches to the other posters within the series — in some cases the final imagery is being rendered entirely in the text of the book.
