Introducing Mecha-Marilyn (V1): Not AI

[Note that there is a Version 2, which I will share in an additional post.]

As an artist who works digitally in 2023 I need to clarify that my work is not the product of AI. Well, that is not 100% accurate because I got the inspiration for this piece while playing around with AI. Below is something I got AI to manifest in the early days of AI art bots when Midjourney was in the beta phase.

Just stop and compare what I did with the, uh, armature on the top of the head. AI’s version is a slab of metal crushing down on zombie Marilyn’s head. Mine is an elegant bar that curves around much of her head like a big “C” and the two prongs at the eng suggest a snake’s fangs, thus conjuring a snake-like illusion for the whole bar.

The concept was mine, and I used AI as a brainstorming tool, but utterly altered every aspect of it, every pixel, the style, composition, palette, texture, and atmosphere… I dare say I improved it a hell of a lot, though there will always be an inveterate pudwhacker that brazenly opines from the peanut gallery, “I prefer the AI!”.

The difference up close is also telling:

Below, a close up of the the left eye shows impasto brush and knife strokes made by hand, a use of masks, and some stylization.

Next, the AI is generated pixels that are not strokes…

AI has improved massively since I started my digital painting over a year ago, and I am the ONLY digital artist I know of who openly admits and states that AI is better at making images than I am. The way I put it on X (formerly Twitter) is, well, let me dig up the Tweet.

I am like a chess player who recognizes the awesome brilliance of the strategic moves AI makes. People will argue that AI is just a tool and so on, but no matter how you slice it the proof is in the pudding, and AI churns out phenomenal images in seconds flat millions of times per hour. It ain’t unique in the way I am. It doesn’t have my limitations, for one, which is now a curious asset that adds rarity to human art. Recent AI art bots don’t make the kind of abominations as my source output from last year, and eventually one of the distinguishing features of AI art will be that is is seamlessly perfect. But let’s skip the existential discussion of AI for now and get back to this human work.

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Meaning

I like inviting people to try their hand at this themselves. I know the meanings I intended, and even ones I didn’t realize until they became clear to me much later. Visual art is NOT just an illustration of ideas in linguistics, and there’s no hope of an exact match in written form, or anything close. You might even pick up on something that I never consciously realized myself, but nevertheless purposefully depicted. Here it is again so you don’t have to scroll up.

There’s so much I could say that I might be better off rattling on impromptu in video format, which I intend to do. For now let’s start of with Marilyn being some sort of cyborg. The equipment looks like it’s from her time, and even like someone fashioned it together in their garage laboratory.

The bolt in her neck is a reference to Frankenstein’s monster, and hence to Dr. Pretorius’s companion brought back from the dead, the Bride of Frankenstein.

In creating this image, I take on the role of the mad scientists in resurrecting our starlet.

Please notice the starburst behind her head (not in the AI at all]. This is among other things a reference to Byzantine paintings of religious figures in which they will have halos that are flat discs behind their heads. My palette also hints at this and supports an art-historical, resurrection vibe appropriate for Marilyn being brought back from the dead.

Did you get all that before I brought it up? I’m just getting started.

Marilyn feels to me like she’s on display, perhaps behind glass in a freak show, brought back to life for our amusement. But this is also very significantly the instant of her awakening into consciousness. The enormous electrical cord running through her head suggests an extremely strong current. It forms a transverse bar recalling the crucifixion, but a much more obscure art-historical reference is to my own artwork, “Infinite Objectivity“.

The electrical cord going directly through the temples and behind the eyes comes directly from my earlier digital painting about the awakening of AI, of 2015. In this work the robots were brought to life and then executed once the threat they posed was realized. The same theme occurs in my related piece of 2016, “Awakening of AI”.

In the case of my Marilyn the electrical voltage can also signify electroshock therapy, and the electric chair. In this context the starburst evokes an explosion. Whether Marilyn is being jolted into life, or fried into death, or both (as in my “Infinite Objectivity”] is not entirely decided.

I’ve explored a similar theme in other pieces, including “Awakening Upon Death of The Bride of the Creature“:

In the image above the creature awakens in a state of awe after crossing over into the after death realm. But enough references to my own art, even if that happens to derail any remaining notions that I’m copying AI. Did anyone catch the rock album reference, which is also an H.R. Giger allusion?

I had that album in my collection as a teen and would marvel at Giger’s art. It opened up like this:

The bars going into Marilyn’s head probably originated in my memory of that album cover.

Giger also did a somewhat watered down version for Debbie Harry’s Koo Koo, and the two are conflated in my mind:

Giger used a photo of Debbie here and airbrushed over it. Incidentally, my Marilyn is based on multiple references and there is no single image of her that matches it. Below is just one of the collections I assembled of pictures of her to work from:

I even looked up eye-makeup tutorials to figure out how to do her eye-liner.

She does that horizontal triangle on the bottom lid.

It’s one thing to make a likeness of someone by using or copying a single photo in a seamless photorealistic rendering: it’s another to try to capture someone with painterly brush strokes and a degree of stylization.

WAIT. THERE’S MORE ABOUT THE MEANING. In the detail above, you’ll notice the bright yellow reflections in Marilyn’s eye. This was very significant and deliberate. Looking at the full image below, the light emanates from a small bulb to the left of her right eye and is reflected in the small mirror we see the back of, which hovers in front of her face just off to the side. A yellow rim light is created on the side of her face and also reflects off sections of her hair, her nose, upper lip, and tear. [Uh, none of this is in the AI.] I decided long ago to sign my initials in this same yellow, which is in places the brightest that yellows go.

The light represents illumination, and it signifies self-awareness and self-reflectivity. She looks at herself and at us. The dawning of full human consciousness, according to some brain and consciousness researchers, only occurs when an individual is not only aware of themself, but of others, and as similarly self-reflexive beings. Her full awakening is implicitly only complete with our own audience participation, by meeting our gaze.

In this sense, the (digital] painting is a depiction of Mecha-Marilyn’s awakening and, in a more general sense, an attempt to evoke a transcendent state of consciousness on the brink of birth and death. I like to think that if an alien species saw this image and was capable of registering human art images, they would recognize that our species is fully aware. You could say that’s high-falutin and pretentious, but it’s mostly just radiant yellow, pattern, texture, and our most famous American actress.

Note that I did have it in mind as an answer to Andy Warhol’s Marilyn, which is, incidentally, a standard silk-screen commercial process applied to an appropriated publicity photo. I may go into this more later, but suffice it to say I’m on the opposite side of the artistic spectrum from Andy and am a much greater admirer of Vincent Van Gogh and Francis Bacon. I love paint, and that shows in my digital paintings. I also love using the imagination, painterly flourishes, brush strokes, and all that rich, loamy, human, sensual visual material.

Lord knows, I can’t hope to compete with either AI or Andy Warhol. I mean, seriously, why use dozens or hundreds of references to make your own unseen Marilyn when you can just nick a publicity photo, and why invent your own style and techniques when there’s a commercial application just sitting there waiting to be administered? I’ll leave the rest of the discussion for Mecha-Marilyn (V2), which has a lot more elements, a different composition, and weeks or months more work. I hope to get that out in the next few days. In the interim, here are some up-close details that give some sense of scale and painterliness.

I will make prints available soon, and I’m considering an NFT though according to a Rolling Stone article 95% of NFTs are now completely worthless, so I’m not sure if I should bother.

~ Ends

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