Merging Thoughts

I’ll be lying if I said I do not have mixed feelings about Ai art generator Midjourney. Last month I experienced Midjourney for the first time, which was quite interesting and scary. As I mentioned in my previous post, it was an amazing-threatening-scary experience. It’ll be interesting to hear what are the founders’ thoughts and the direction they want to take with this project. I suppose they are trying to feed the machine and learn more about how people use Midjourney to explore creativity for now, or who knows…

Even with mixed feelings, I think it is a great technology that will help creatives reduce production time in some areas of design/creativity, allowing creatives have more time to do what they love. However, although Ai art generators may help creatives or anybody to create concepts in a few seconds using only text prompts, I think it is important not to forget about nurturing creativity as humans.

On labor day weekend, I went camping with the family; we camped in the Mogollon Rim in the Eastern part of Arizona. It was my first time visiting this area of the State and our first time camping as a family. My wife and I were a little worried about the idea of camping with a rebel five years old and toddler. Luckily, they enjoyed and behaved accordingly, just like two wild animals in their natural environment.

While watching my five-year-old kid explore the forest, bug hunt, and ask questions about everything and anything, I wondered about the stimulation and dopamine going through in his little mind—the impact it was creating on his life and persona. He did not perceive things the same way after having a hands-on experience with new textures, materials, bugs, and foreign objects; perhaps exploring nature was priceless for him.

I enjoyed watching him discover new things and how his mind was getting stimulated. It made me rethink the idea/feeling of Ai art generators replacing digital artists/designers. I think creatives, as hyper sensitives persons, play an essential role in the creation process of any Ai generators. As creatives, we perceive things on a deeper level. We delve into the composition of anything, its form, texture, color, material, and dimension. Perhaps, I think that is why we see so amazing digital art produced by Ai art generators because a considerable percentage of users are in the creative field—people with a trained eye and mind about what makes a great visual composition. So I wonder what kind of results or artwork we will see when this technology becomes more mainstream.

Good art? Bad art? Who knows… at the end, design and art are subjective, right?. But as a person with a trained eye, we may use the tool more intentionally and effectively to generate the desired outcome. Our hypersensitivity to perceiving things on a deeper level and capacity to make a creative decision is a critical resource for the Ai, and I think it depends on that to function. Ai can’t make creative decisions, only outcomes, which is still an advantage for digital artists and designers.

Considering that technology is constantly evolving and improving, at a certain point, Ai could make the creative decision for us, and then we may have a problem. Yes, but meanwhile, and until that happens, let’s reconnect with nature to nurture and fuel our creativity. Scape to the mountains and get lost for a little bit. Ride a bike, and allow your face to sense the wind and the sun. Go to the park, lie on the grass, and daydream, watching the clouds. Find something that has a connection with the outdoors and let it stimulates your mind and flood it with dopamine. Let’s forget about Artificial Intelligence(Ai) and reconnect with Nature Intelligence (Ni). A strong connection and relationship with Ni will help us improve our perception of things, nurture our imagination, and promote our visualizations, which will be a vital source for any Ai to output creative results.

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