Landvættir is a practice-based art research project and portfolio documenting the bootstrapping era of Generative AI and AGI through digital landscapes, virtual worlds, and AI-generated imagery. Drawing on Scenism, Romanticism, and environmental psychology, it explores how AI systems trained on cultural visual heritage may dream or hallucinate the virtual landscapes that seeded their intelligence.
Semantic Classification
Content
- Papers with Umran Domain Expert Contact Index
- email (5236) Inbox | j.j.ohare@pm.me | Proton Mail
- Access denied (google.com)
- Keywords: A.I, GAN, Landscape, Virtual, Digital Art, Virtual worlds, games, design, GenAI
- Landvættir is a portfolio journey across these bootstrapping years of GenAI and AGI
- Colin
- The Scenism manifesto refers to a set of principles and ideas that revolve around the concept of scenism in the context of art and entertainment. Scenism places a strong emphasis on the power of creating immersive and visually captivating experiences for its audience. It aims to go beyond merely presenting a piece of art or storytelling, and instead seeks to transport the audience into a vivid and engaging world. At the core of the Scenism manifesto is the belief that the environment or setting plays a crucial role in shaping the overall experience. Scenists believe that by creating intricate and detailed environments, they can enhance the emotional impact of the art form. This goes beyond simply designing a visually pleasing backdrop; it involves creating a multi-sensory experience that allows the audience to feel fully immersed in the world being presented.
- Scenists also recognize the importance of collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches in creating truly impactful experiences. They advocate for the involvement of professionals from various fields such as set design, lighting design, sound design, costume design, and more, to work together seamlessly and cohesively. This collaborative effort ensures that every aspect of the scenography supports and enhances the overall experience.
- Another key aspect of Scenism is the utilization of technology and innovation. Scenists embrace advancements in technology to push the boundaries of what can be achieved in terms of creating immersive experiences. This includes the use of virtual reality, augmented reality, interactive elements, and other cutting-edge tools to enhance the audience’s engagement and deepen their connection with the artistic work.
- Scenism also seeks to challenge traditional audience-performer dynamics. Instead of passive viewers, the manifesto encourages the audience to actively engage with the environment and participate in the experience. This can involve interactive elements, audience interaction, or even blurring the lines between the performer and the spectator. The goal is to create an inclusive and participatory atmosphere where the audience becomes an integral part of the artistic narrative.
- In summary, the Scenism manifesto underscores the importance of creating immersive, visually captivating experiences that go beyond traditional art forms. By emphasizing the role of intricate environments, collaboration, technology, and active audience engagement, Scenism aims to push boundaries and unlock new realms of artistic expression and engagement.
- a further exploration of my Scenism manifesto, and is a practice based art research project.
Papers Planning
- This is a portfolio of papers describing the history of these moments, artists, and technologies
Light lit survey of praxis artists and movements The term Landvættir is an old Nordic phrase used to describe the souls/spirits that inhabit and protect the natural landscapes; the soul of a landscape so to speak. Whilst our physical landscapes and presence will eventually diminish, our interpretations and experiences of these ‘places’ albeit virtual will endure. Landvættir is an attempt to manifest the Greek aphorism; Ars longa, vita brevis Many still feel virtual worlds, are just that, a cheap imitation of reality, a replica of the ‘real’ thing, nothing more than a simulacra, a fake copy that as Plato argued was a distortion and a deviation of truth. The word Simulacra has long been a focal point for philosophers, with its roots stemming from classical Greek philosophy, in particular Plato’s dialogues to the modern day as Jean Baudrillard, the postmodern social theorist, who unlike Plato argued the simulacra was not a copy but in fact a truth, in its own right: “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none…..The simulacrum is true.” (Poster & Mourrain, 2002, pp.166-184) We have witnessed the birth not only a new epoch of artistic practice but perhaps something far more deeper a new intelligence, not artificial but evolutionary intelligence; one that threatens as much as it promises. The embryonic precursor digital landscapes we ‘play’ and create today are far more fragile that we could ever comprehend; undermined by the notion that there are simple digital entities can be replicated and saved with ease…..however how we experienced them, as individuals and the grater collective, the impact on our every evolving and transient collective unconscious, all the spaces inbetween cannot. Landvættir explores notions of latent space (the space in between the generated data) as it in ways reflects the experience and perceptions of digital landscape art; beyond the digital/binary representation there is a another layer; fleeting If the generations of A.I to follow dream of the first virtual places, will they dream of Turner, Constable and Monet? Or would they dream of the precursor virtual landscapes where the seeds of their intelligence took hold and began to grow? Landvættir explores an alternative approach to generative A.I art. Contemporary approaches to generative adversarial network art heavily utilize image scrapping to form the foundation of the dataset’s used to train generative models; however Landvættir ‘virscapes’ are perhaps the world first that use a curated dataset of digital landscapes (created as part of a 7 year doctoral study project) thousands of virtual game landscapes were collected and used to generate the digital Landvættir ‘virscapes’. The virscapes are not simply generated from a ‘mass farming’ of images; but one that has been curated, not driven by metadata alone but from the individual and collective emotional responses of players and virtual landscape inhabitants driving the selection of virtual landscapes to include across three decades. Grounding Identity Beeple, Banksy, anonymity, NFTs, digital, community The overpowering nature of external perceptions of identity The empowering potential of anonymity for experimentation How does AI view these things? Early experimentation GANs Embed emotion Very high resolution Methodology Data preperation Curation of landscapes Intentionally minimising human curation and preference / influence Data manipulation Aspect ratios, resizing Managing distortions through automation RunwayML (studio? sunsetted) Building on Ann Spelters working Steps and Epochs Referencing style gans Dreaming up imaginary landscapes with Runway ML & StyleGAN A no-code and step-by-step account of training a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to generate places that don’t exist Generating process dig out the details Need to disambiguate the terminology Volumes (runs) of generation Latent space exploration videos and animations co-proximate n dimension embeddings in latent space have sufficient similarity to tween / animate Outputs … — working/pages/Virscapes.md
Gamescapes
- Holding text
The Binding Paper
- If the generations of A.I to follow dream of the first virtual places, will they dream of Turner, Constable and Monet? Or would they dream of the precursor virtual landscapes where the seeds of their intelligence took hold and began to grow?
- Arc and reasons
- Survey and Framework
- Embedding in wider artistic praxis, not tech for tech sake,
- Grounding
- Theoretical framework Venn
- Scenism
- Romanticism
- Environmental psychology
- Architechture -