AI Art
You jump into the painting labeled as "AI Art." You might have mixed feelings about AI art and if it can even be considered art. It IS ethically complicated; there's a real loss to artists, concerns with what's included in training data sets, inherent bias, and what negative actions can be taken with AI art. This can't be separated from the medium, even if I think it has potential as a tool when used with care. With all that said, here are some images I generated with some sense of care and intent. I'll write about each one too, so you know it wasn't done thoughtlessly!
POV: I am the Beast I Worship
You might know by now that I'm an oni shrine maiden. Most days I'm more shrine maiden than oni - after all, it's hard to carry a huge spikey club and drink lots of sake every day in modern society! But the oni is still an important part of me - the oni is my 'shadow self.' It can never go away, and I wouldn't want it to go away. Psychologist Carl Jung talked a lot about how integrating your 'shadow' can lead to spiritual experiences and aid in your personal healing process. This video is about Miko integrating the oni, and guiding you to integrate YOUR shadow self at the same time.
As for the music and imagery choice - the line 'I am the beast I worship' comes from a Death Grips song (of all things) that has always felt spiritual and about self-actualization to me. I also wanted it to have Hideaki Anno imagery too - it was partinspired by a 2002 Evangelion/Kare Kano/Love and Pop AMV made by AbsoluteDestiny and THAT video had the world's longest description ever. Longer than this one, even. In a way, making my own silly pretentious music video feels like coming full-circle in my life. I worked on this right around when DALL-E was getting big media attention, so if I made it today, I might make it a little differently! (https://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=9702)
I have my own memories attached to these AI generated images, all made by DALL-E/Crayion in the style of psychedelic artist Alex Grey (he designed the Tool album covers), but what you feel when you see a pair of shoes or a bathroom mirror will be unique to you. So, there's no wrong way to interpret this overly-pretentious video, but I hope that maybe you'll become the beast you worship too :)
Oni Girls
I really enjoy the trend of putting black bars with white text over the eyes of colorful cyberpunk/vaporwave anime girls. These images are almost always sad - real examples I've seen say things like 'LOST' or 'SADNESS' or 'ANTISOCIAL' or '>TFW LONELY' over their eyes. I often do the same thing when I take pictures of myself before sending them to people. I am usually more comfortable if I can hide a part of my face for a picture. If I take it, I put a black bar on my eyes, and if someone else takes it, I put a peace sign in front of my face. But, I don't want to say LOST or SADNESS! So I wrote the character for oni instead. Again, I'm all about self-actualization, so what could be better than replacing your face with the character for your shadow self. (It reminds me of Sanosuke from Kenshin wearing the character for 'bad' on his back, hehe). This works out well for DALL-E images where the eyes are so often.. not very eye looking... If I want a black bar over my eyes, I'm sure these girls do too.
The girls themselves that DALL-E generated were supposed to be blue-haired shrine maidens in a Lisa Frank style, but interestingly it seems to think all shrine maidens are Reimu from Touhou!
Cyberpunk Oni
The training data must not have included pants! The first three came from "y2k cyberpunk oni girl with blue hair and red horns wearing supreme and cool shoes" and the fourth came from "cyberspace y2k aesthetic oni" (all Midjourney). It's neat to see what these have in common! There's the mech imagery that they're sitting in front of, which has oni influence, and they all have massive shoes. Clearly cool shoes are massive shoes. It would be fun to try to match this look in person too - clearly all it takes is massive red shoes, shorts, and a cool jacket...
The fourth one I sent to a friend, who pointed out that the background was very H.R. Giger, and I realized I didn't know who that was. In case you don't know either, he was a Swiss artist "best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines" and often represented "human bodies and machines in cold, interconnected relationships, which he described as "biomechanical." He did a ton of design for Alien (including designing the, you know, ALIEN) so TLDR, he was kind of a big deal for the cyberpunk aesthetic! It makes sense then, that AI art would rip/train from his work, and that hits hard - doing these types of sculptures had to have taken so long and taken so much thought. At the same time, I'm glad I was able to learn about him and his influence regardless, though. Here's a cool interview with him on a "pagan magickal journal" website that's been around since 1999: http://www.shadowplayzine.com/Interviews/giger.htm
His description of working on art is familiar too - "I have something in my head and I try to work it out - like a kind of exorcism..."
My favorite kind of art to make is when I feel like there's something separate inside of me that needs to crawl out somehow, and I can't rest until it happens. The two videos on the main page were like that - I didn't even really want to make them, but I was struck with the exorcism feeling, like I HAD to, like no one else would make it the way I wanted, so I worked on them in frenetic bursts until completion. They're obviously less haunting and infinitely more simplistic than H.R. Giger's work, but I think the feeling is similar. And even though AI art is interesting, it can never compare to that feeling! :)