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Monday, September 19, 2022
Imagine/: Artificial Intelligence Comes to Theatrical Design
The Theatre Times: Lately, I have been seeing examples of Jason Jamerson’s theatrical design work on Instagram – images he has made in collaboration with Artificial Intelligence apps.
6 comments:
Angie Zarrilli
said...
While I think that AI is very interesting and can be an interesting artform, I also think that there are some instances where it doesn’t belong. Much of theater is about purposeful design of the scene. When you put that into the hands of an AI, you lose part of that intention. It can only carry so much intent with the words you use to call to the machine to make the image. And while I do think that there could be a place for these AI images in a theatrical setting if applicable, I don’t think that this is very revolutionary to the theater world. At least, it shouldn’t be. I still really appreciate the hand crafted and ideated scenes. Even outside of theater, the handcrafted is alway better than the machine made. It has imperfections that give it value. When you try to make art from a machine that isn’t supposed to make mistakes, you lose part of that.
I find the idea of set design inspired by artificial intelligence a really interesting but morally complicated idea. It feels a little bit like cheating in that you’re using the work of others and the coding of others in order to create your own “original design”. I am no AI expert, but I believe that art AIs use an amalgamation of learning software and other peoples’ artwork in order to learn what ‘good’ art looks like. Furthermore, although one can liken it to using something like drafting software or a drawing app, midjourney is a free-to-use website that was not coded by this man. He states that he is not worried about the “death of the artist”, and neither am I, but I am worried about the lack of originality that this type of reliance on a computer for ideas will bring.
Holy cow. Immediately opening this article, I see this beautiful design. Upon reading, I realize that an AI app inspired this design. I’ve never thought of the idea of creating an intelligent system to feed through hundreds of thousands of images from other shows to create designs that designers can use for inspiration. Reading that some scenic designers have gotten mad about AI designs is kind of funny. I can get where they’re coming from, but we as designers do look at google images for inspiration too. I think the important thing with this especially is to not directly take the design the AI made and use that, rather use it as inspiration. I really love what Jason says “I think A.I. is a lantern. As long as we’re in charge of where we’re going.” We can’t allow the programming to control what we’re designing though. -Hailey Garza
I think it’s super interesting that we’re starting to bring in such advanced technology to theater design. All throughout my time doing theater, I’ve always seen some sort of limit when it comes to what we can do in the theater, especially with set design. When I was involved with Catch Me if You Can my sophomore year, I remember there being tons and tons of flaws on the set that there couldn’t be much done about, and the projections on the CYC were super blurry and pixelated. Being able to have these artificial intelligence elements involved in the process could clean things and possibly make things so much easier for everyone involved in the production, especially with backgrounds and things we just can’t create yet. Although, I also see the alternative issue, where having physical sets and things we can actually feel and touch is a lot better for the actors. I think going forward with this technology, we have to be very mindful of creating a balance between the two.
I believe that I agree with many of the points made in this article. I think that the AI technology can be invigorating and rejuvenate scene design but I also think that the classic work of script analysis must be employed and not forgotten. I think that AI can be a great place to start because the computer really doesn’t just do all of the work. You have to put in the right words, the right concepts, the right analysis. All of that takes some understanding and imposed perception of the story that you want to tell. So it may not require some of the same physical artistic skills once demanded but I don’t think that it means the designer isn’t being creative or “designing”. As mentioned in the article, everyone uses google reach or images to help them come to some inspiration. AI is just taking it one step further.
I've said it before and I will say it again, we should be using this technology to aid ourselves in the same way we use a color wheel. What an incredible tool for inspiration and lodging creative blocks free. I think we should still train artists to get a feel for developing a concept or composition on their own, but why shouldn't we use it? It's very literally just Computer Aided Design software. And it has been weird watching the images go from being surreal nightmares at the beginning of this technologies inception to actually being able to create some half competent images that are actually able to fool people. Having the human touch starting to disappear in our artwork is chilling. But this ability to generate unique images based off of a seed is absolutely incredible to me, and I can't wait to see where the development of this technology ultimately leads us.
6 comments:
While I think that AI is very interesting and can be an interesting artform, I also think that there are some instances where it doesn’t belong. Much of theater is about purposeful design of the scene. When you put that into the hands of an AI, you lose part of that intention. It can only carry so much intent with the words you use to call to the machine to make the image. And while I do think that there could be a place for these AI images in a theatrical setting if applicable, I don’t think that this is very revolutionary to the theater world. At least, it shouldn’t be. I still really appreciate the hand crafted and ideated scenes. Even outside of theater, the handcrafted is alway better than the machine made. It has imperfections that give it value. When you try to make art from a machine that isn’t supposed to make mistakes, you lose part of that.
I find the idea of set design inspired by artificial intelligence a really interesting but morally complicated idea. It feels a little bit like cheating in that you’re using the work of others and the coding of others in order to create your own “original design”. I am no AI expert, but I believe that art AIs use an amalgamation of learning software and other peoples’ artwork in order to learn what ‘good’ art looks like. Furthermore, although one can liken it to using something like drafting software or a drawing app, midjourney is a free-to-use website that was not coded by this man. He states that he is not worried about the “death of the artist”, and neither am I, but I am worried about the lack of originality that this type of reliance on a computer for ideas will bring.
Holy cow. Immediately opening this article, I see this beautiful design. Upon reading, I realize that an AI app inspired this design. I’ve never thought of the idea of creating an intelligent system to feed through hundreds of thousands of images from other shows to create designs that designers can use for inspiration. Reading that some scenic designers have gotten mad about AI designs is kind of funny. I can get where they’re coming from, but we as designers do look at google images for inspiration too. I think the important thing with this especially is to not directly take the design the AI made and use that, rather use it as inspiration. I really love what Jason says “I think A.I. is a lantern. As long as we’re in charge of where we’re going.” We can’t allow the programming to control what we’re designing though. -Hailey Garza
I think it’s super interesting that we’re starting to bring in such advanced technology to theater design. All throughout my time doing theater, I’ve always seen some sort of limit when it comes to what we can do in the theater, especially with set design. When I was involved with Catch Me if You Can my sophomore year, I remember there being tons and tons of flaws on the set that there couldn’t be much done about, and the projections on the CYC were super blurry and pixelated. Being able to have these artificial intelligence elements involved in the process could clean things and possibly make things so much easier for everyone involved in the production, especially with backgrounds and things we just can’t create yet. Although, I also see the alternative issue, where having physical sets and things we can actually feel and touch is a lot better for the actors. I think going forward with this technology, we have to be very mindful of creating a balance between the two.
I believe that I agree with many of the points made in this article. I think that the AI technology can be invigorating and rejuvenate scene design but I also think that the classic work of script analysis must be employed and not forgotten. I think that AI can be a great place to start because the computer really doesn’t just do all of the work. You have to put in the right words, the right concepts, the right analysis. All of that takes some understanding and imposed perception of the story that you want to tell. So it may not require some of the same physical artistic skills once demanded but I don’t think that it means the designer isn’t being creative or “designing”. As mentioned in the article, everyone uses google reach or images to help them come to some inspiration. AI is just taking it one step further.
I've said it before and I will say it again, we should be using this technology to aid ourselves in the same way we use a color wheel. What an incredible tool for inspiration and lodging creative blocks free. I think we should still train artists to get a feel for developing a concept or composition on their own, but why shouldn't we use it? It's very literally just Computer Aided Design software. And it has been weird watching the images go from being surreal nightmares at the beginning of this technologies inception to actually being able to create some half competent images that are actually able to fool people. Having the human touch starting to disappear in our artwork is chilling. But this ability to generate unique images based off of a seed is absolutely incredible to me, and I can't wait to see where the development of this technology ultimately leads us.
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