The Carmel Art Community is home to many SL artists, offering both boutique studio spaces in which they can display / sell their work, and regular art-related events through the year. It’s a community I’ve covered in terms of facilities and exhibitions in the past in these pages – and will continue to do so. However, for this piece I want to focus on just one newly-opened exhibit, as it is focused on an tool that is fast becoming very popular with artists the world over, and one I’ve mentioned rather a lot of late: Midjourney AI art generator.
The exhibition in question is The Face of Beauty, by Hermes Kondor. Comprising a total of 14 pieces, it has attracted me due to the manner in which Hermes has used Midjourney; one that is somewhat different to the exhibitions featuring its use I’ve so far mentioned in these pages.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Midjourney utilises descriptive text and text terms to curate together / generate images. The results can be far ranging, from almost perfectly capturing the artist’s intent in the most realistic of fashion, to entirely abstract or impressionistic results, depending on what is defined. For example, “/imagine a city in Japan at night” will result in something close to the description, whereas, “/imagine a knight in battle, cinematic, epic, detailed, octane render, intricate” may result in something more abstract – or at at least, unexpected.
For the images presented in The Face of Beauty, Hermes has used his own descriptions – or as he terms it, “personal concept and prompts”, then taking the results and further processing them using PhotoShop. The result is the most remarkable collection of head-and-shoulder portraits of women from around the world, dressed in period / floral / regional dress. Such is the craft involved – and allowing from the human touch in post-processing, it is difficult to comprehend these were images defined by the use of algorithms rather than captured on film or committed to canvas in oil.
To describe these pieces further is to defeat the objective of having them displayed by the artist; therefore I’ll leave you with the images here as a taste and suggest you pay a visit and witness The Face of Beauty first-hand.
SLurl Details
- The Face of Beauty, Carmel Art Community (McFarren, rated Adut)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 