AI Art - the new art...artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines like computers. Applications of AI include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition, and machine vision. AI artwork like Daniela Martelanz's portrait above (dm_ai_art on Instagram) is artwork created through the use of AI. AI art uses text-to-image systems, image diffusion models like DALLE-2, Imagen, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney - AI tools and applications using 'traditional' photoshop sometimes as well. Art-generated AIs are trained on datasets of millions of images taken from the Internet, including ones that are copyrighted or watermarked. AI art algorithms only ever generate images based on the data they have been trained on. AI programs reproduce images they have seen before.

AI art is post the digital retouching usually found in beauty (makeup) shots and fashion magazine photography. AI art is an evolutionary art presenting entirely new media using 21st Century tools and applications. The incredible artifice and realism in AI art originates in its technology and its idealising effects, the human ideal, a new classical aesthetic - symmetry, balance, perfection.

Exerting the influential power of art, online artists like Daniela Martelanz and Arturo Arvizu (arvizu_art on Instagram - he describes himself as a "Painter") generate and amplify idealised, perfected realism in art that is artificial. The echo of the sound of our response to AI art has yet to be received...

Alienation used to diagnose the condition of a population becoming foreign to itself, offering a prognosis that promised recovery. All of  that is over. We are all foreigners now. No longer alienated, but alien...DC 

A Useful Dimension of Glamour or A Science Fiction...

 

                                                   A Useful Dimension of Glamour #DC

This colossal involvement seemed to have become her last refuge, the only retreat for her fugitive self in its flight from the world...with silver iodide, we could carve the clouds.

The future wants to steal your soul and vaporise it in nanotechnics. Retroviruses enable everything that DNA can do. The virus has no history. It is pure signal without memory...

Fluid, nonverbal, non-linear, a medium.

We are many, they are few.

An electron crashes into a language, a black hole captures a genetic message - DC

Post-Processing, Beauty, Retouching

Photography Desiree Mattsson Model Charli Howard for Pat McGrath Labs

The $532.43 billion dollar Beauty industry is competing with the $2.4 trillion dollar Fashion industry in exposure, interest and accessibility by now. As usual, beauty products are defining beauty - how glossy, slick, smokey, dark, bright, colourful, concealed, highlighted or contoured you look. As well as this, post-processing and retouching in beauty photography is inventing a beauty look also with its technologically applied, post-processed veneers to the skin and contours of the face especially.

Post-processing is a digital process of editing the data captured by the camera while taking the photograph to enhance the image. Previously, in 1992, the verb 'to photoshop' was assimilated into the language when it was added to the English dictionary, describing post-processing and retouching in photography. Retouching was a perfecting process pioneered in the 1860s. Digital retouching, which improves the photograph's appearance, utilizes photo editing software using a number of tools including blurring brushes, colour replacement tools, and clone stamps.

Most people still do not realize the futuristic look of retouched beauty photography is not real. Or else it doesn't matter. There doesn't seem to be any issues with achievability either. A similar evolution in beauty happened in the 1950s with Richard Avedon's 'Dovima With Elephants', dress by Dior, Harper's Bazaar, August 1955, or in Irving Penn's Vogue photographs. Beauty photographer Desiree Mattsson's exquisite and technologically crafted beauty photography, most notably for Pat McGrath's Labs makeup line, see above, is post-Vogue in the success of its effects and it totally surpasses any previous history of beauty photography. As well as defining the look of beauty today, using various media, the Beauty industry with all of its beauty products, the lipstick, the concealer, the mascara, the eyeshadow, will actively reproduce the look of digital, post-processed, retouched beauty photography, in its own products too, advancing, as it progresses, the technology at our fingertips. Evolutionary cosmetics, evolutionary beauty - a useful dimension of glamour.

A Happy Christmas...Vogue Italia September 1999 Issue

Photography Paolo Roversi Model Stella Tennant Makeup Pat McGrath Hair Eugene Souleiman

Italian photographer Paolo Roversi illuminates beauty from darkness in this photograph. The effect is painterly. The incredible makeup, a colourful smudge, bears the imprint of the hand of renowned backstage makeup artist Pat McGrath, and Eugene Souleiman completes the concept with the invention of a felt cap for the head.

Have a very Happy Christmas this year and Best Wishes for 2019!

Versace Autumn/Winter 2018 Makeup Pat McGrath, Hair by Guido Palau

Versace Autumn/Winter 2018 Makeup Pat McGrath, Hair by Guido Palau

It's not that an experiment ended in makeup this season, Autumn/Winter 2018, at Versace. With a neutral and nude look, Pat McGrath creates a new and natural beauty. Brows are groomed lightly above carefully defined eyes. There is little colour in the face. Highlighter is used, not on the cheekbones, but on the inner eyes and on the cupid's bow to define and brighten instead. Lip colour is subtle. Hair by Guido Palau is sleek, centre parted, and tucked neatly behind the ears. It's tonged at the ends for a "bend" in the hair. This beauty enhances an interesting, tailored collection by Versace Autumn/Winter 2018. I like the 'rhinestone' gold studs in the collars of the shirts against the tartan. The overall look is completely pristine.

American Vogue June 1973 Photographer Richard Avedon, Model Lauren Hutton

American Vogue June 1973 Photographer Richard Avedon, Model Lauren Hutton

Archive: Dior Makeup 1968, Makeup Artist Serge Lutens

French makeup artist Serge Lutens was employed in 1967 by the House of Dior to develop their beauty line, their makeup. Having worked previously with photographers Guy Bourdin and Richard Avedon, Lutens was already at the cutting edge. The photograph above is a beauty shot, a close-up, the makeup by Dior, 1968. The yellow makeup, full of pigment, on the model's face is immediately eye-catching and the dot of yellow under the lip draws the eye also. The band on the model's head is a net, it's tight, beautifying and so yellow as well. This model looks blonde.The look is futuristic, as if demonstrating a kind of beauty that doesn't yet exist. The mascara is so Sixties, it's hyper elongating and really stands out. What colour is the lip, a glossy orange peach on a pale, pale face?

Essential Summer 2018 Beauty - Sun Protection Factor - Wear Your SPF

A Summer beauty routine is incomplete without the addition of essential protection for your skin from strong, harmful UVA and UBV sun rays. UBV rays cause sunburn. UVA rays penetrate the epidermis more deeply, reaching into the dermis, the skin's thickest layer, where most skin cancers occur. Both UVA and UBV sun rays cause premature ageing of the skin - dryness, wrinkles, age spots. Prolonged ultraviolet exposure may also cause cataracts and eye cancer, so shield your eyes as well. SPF or Sun Protection Factor is a measure of how well a sunscreen protects you from sunburn. Applying a SPF cream, oil or lotion with UVA/UBV filters is completely essential and it is essential all year round. A 'broad-spectrum' or 'full-spectrum' sunscreen protects from both UVA and UBV damage. Only sunscreens with a value of  SPF 15 or higher can claim to reduce the risk of skin cancer and premature ageing.

My go-to SPF, for the glow it gives my skin, is P20 by Dutch company Riemann. It's an oil containing alcohol so rub between the palms to evaporate the alcohol and then apply. P20 is recommended for wear under a moisturiser or make-up so it is suitable for the face. Stocked at Superdrug, £17.99 for 100ml. P20 is highly waterproof.

Or have you tried UV Water, the next generation SPF? Garnier, SPF experts since 1935, have just launched Ambre Solaire UV Water Clear Sun Cream Spray, £8 for 150ml. A 'biphasic' formula, it protects from UVA/UBV, and hydrates with Aloe Vera water. Water resistant, this UV Water Spray feels velvety and gives a softness and a glow to the skin. It contains alcohol but it's refreshing and applies just like water. Shake vigorously as instructed and spread this liquid cream SPF with a rotating movement all over the body. Do not spray directly onto the face - rub between the palms first and then apply, avoiding the delicate eye area. Enjoy your Summer. Wear your SPF! - DC