Homegrown Visual Artists Creatively Using AI In Their Designs
Artificial Intelligence which was previously limited to technical industries has made its way into the world of fine art. In the last few years, AI based art generating programs such as DALL-E-2, Midjourney, Dream by WOMBO, Nightcafe, Jasper Art, Stable Diffusion have been used by new and old visual artists and create shockingly stunning work that has been showcased at exhibitions and used to create entire graphic novels.
The text-to-art process of AI art programs have made it easier for newer artists to produce what traditionally takes years of skills and practice to create. While crafting prompts, which are the text descriptors you enter into an AI art generator, still requires some learning, the overall dynamics of visual art creation has substantially changed since the arrival of AI.
Not only are traditional visual artists experimenting with it, but the engaging interface has generated a wave of excitement among people across all walks of life to indulge in it. AI's popularity is heading towards becoming a new art and technological movement in itself, expanding the limits of art and exploring new paradigms of storytelling.
So we thought we'd curate a list of some Indian AI artists that should you check out.
I. Prateek Arora
Prateek is the VP of development at Bang Bang Mediacorp and also a screenwriter. He started exploring AI image synthesis as concept art for his stories which he cretes as a way of exploring newer and more radical ways of storytelling. "As a writer-producer, I’m most interested in fiction that subverts dominant, "correct" storytelling models. Contemporary pop-fiction must be an exercise in narrative anarchy, an attempt to stare the panopticon in the face and get the machine to dream again."
Check out his art here.
II. NFN Kalyan
NFN Kalyan is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist, based in Miami. His paintings are usually done in series, exploring themes of social justice, politics, religion, and the human condition, all while referencing the history of art. While his work has an influence from the Western school of aesthetics, his abundant use of colour and recurring mythological references create a blended representation of his Indian roots. Although Kalyan is a hypereralistic painter, he has recently started creating AI art via Midjourney.
Follow his work here.
III. Anand Gandhi
Anand is an Indian filmmaker, entrepreneur, media producer, innovator and systems researcher. He is also the founder/CEO of the Mumbai-based new media studio and systems think tank Memesys Culture Lab. His debut feature film Ship of Thesus (2013), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival won the National Film Award for Best Picture. Since his introduction to AI at the MIT media lab a decade ago, he has been using it to create storyboards for his films pushing the boundaries of innovation.
Check out his work here.
IV. Ari Jayaprakash
Ari is an internationally acclaimed Indian artist and musician born in Wellington, India. He belongs to the Badaga tribe, who inhabit the Nilgiris. Having worked and showcased all over the world, his work is a confluence of influences that are constantly being explored and realised through art, photography and music. His work incorporates relevant global themes of alienation, isolation, Identity. corruption oppression, urban seclusion and other social commentary.
Follow him here.l
V. Chakshu Khatsuria
Chakshu is a Director, Screenwriter, and part-time Editor based in Mumbai who studied business administration but eventually pursued filmmaking for the love of cinema. His creative journey started with photography which strengthened his language of film and the visual medium in general. He is known for the TV series, Talk Shop (2017) and a short film, At The Dot (2019). Chakshu is also new to the AI world and has started creating art using Midjourney.
Check out his work here.
VI. Sahej Rahal
Sahej is a visual artist from Mumbai. He has been a recipient of many prestigious international residencies and won the Forbes Award for Debut Solo Show, 2014. His body of work is a growing narrative that draws upon mythical beings, and brings them into a dialogue with the present. Within this narrative, these beings perform absurd acts in derelict corners of the city, transforming them into liminal sites of ritual. Sahej's artwork revolves around the themes of organic and inorganic lifeforms, cosmic beings, and futurism.
Follow his work here.
VII. Harsh Jani
The founding director of Parallel Planet Films, Harsh Jani is a visual artist who draws his inspiration by exploring human relationships and their independent characteristics through different mediums of photography like portraits, fashion and documentary. Harsh’s work continues to be published on various platforms like photovogue, mob journal, picton, promo New York, IIFA, man magazine and many other fashion brands. He has recently been creating AI portraits with Midjourney and Capture one.
Follow his work here.
VIII. Ashish Jose
Ashish is a drum n bass DJ/producer that goes by the moniker, Tarqeeb known for his deep, groovy bass-lines, dark atmospheres and high energy dance music. He has been creating visual art for a while and since the AI programs got popular, Ashish got deeper into it. Some of his latest projects include Tribes - Inuits from Alaska, Varanasi fashion week, Early Bionics - a series of futuristic, mechanical animals, Goa 2004 - Inter-dimensional travel, superorganism, etc.
Checkout his art here.
IX. Auria Kathi
Auria Kathi is the first Artificially Intelligent poet-artist living completely in the cloud. 'She' was created as a machine learning art project by Fabin Rasheed and Sleeba Paul in collaboration with Microsoft. 'Her' work was featured in multiple international venues including the Florence Biennale 2019 and NeurIPS 2019. Auria has now become a standalone bot which requires no maintenance — she keeps posting a poem and an artwork every day on Instagram. So far, she has gathered up some followers and comments by humans.
Check out her work here.
