“AI is the retina of the mind’s eye” – Videodrome
(paraphrased)
OK, I will cheerfully hold up my hands and admit:
I know virtually nothing whatsoever about Artificial Intelligence. And I am far
from alone in that. Technology has just been coming in too fast, too soon for
decades now, and folk are just sick to the back teeth of it all, while they
starve in the streets.
All that I have really personally heard is what everybody else has: it’s coming
to take our jobs, it’s revolutionary, evolutionary, will soon develop enough to
wipe out the human race after becoming more intelligent than us! Ad infinitum,
ad tedium all the nada yadda yadda. You know exactly what I mean, I’m sure.
It’s difficult to get worked up about any of it, though you can bet that if
the English government wants to ‘turbocharge’ it and turn this divided, broken
island into an ‘AI superpower’ (whatever the Hell that is) that it will be
shite, bottom line. Pure sit-and-swivel drivelicious slopaganda.
I have been doing a wee bit of reading on the subject recently. AI is not well
regarded, putting it mildly, in some quarters. Seems like one of the high heid
yins, Sam Altman, is a deranged, delusional lunatic distrusted to tell the
truth about AI even by his own employees and coworkers. Lying AI makes constant
mistakes exposed online by discontent creators. Some new rubbish, Artificial
General Intelligence (AGI) is already coming down the pipeline, before we have
even had time to begin to absorb the first wave of stroppy slop from the
technogods. Writers hate it, for absorbing and reproducing their work for free.
And it’s all looking like a Ponzi scheme, with environmentally destructive data
centres getting flung up before the AI bubble bursts and it gets exposed for
the fad that it supposedly is.
Who knows what the bloody truth is? Not me.
On the diametrically exposed end of the technological and existential carousel,
we have AI insta-art. Now, I really couldn’t care less about AI, and think the
modern world is horrendous, just like a great many people. Seems like nerdy
science fiction geeks are running the world into the ground with their pet
peeves and projects because they couldn’t get a date in high school. Hard knock
life, and now they want revenge. But in amongst all this bemused, jaundiced
thinking about AI, I recently encountered something beautiful: the AI work of
Scottish artist @ArchAngelDemons, on the mostly-worthless Instagram.
It’s a world of a neo-archaic, anarchic techno-Hell,
perfectly articulated, and she’s far from the only one producing the strange
stuff.
I came across the @ArchAngelDemons page quite by accident. I was pointlessly scrolling
along, bored out of my brain, when…something caught my eye. Death-bathing women
on a radioactive beach melting like ice cream. Surreal, bold, hot, cold, ludicrous, tense, satiric, an exploded dark image collagenikov…and clearly AI. I started my usual internal internet rant about it
being infernally stupid, useless shite…but was soon back looking at it again,
in much more depth this time. Strolled through the empty calorie eye candy
gallery at leisure, a slaughterhouse of traditional analogue Celtic dreams, soaking it all up. I have long ago learned that the stuff I
hate and react against most on initial discovery is the stuff I end up loving
the most.
Especially in the case of the work of @ArchAngelDemons. Her transgressive digiworld is a strange, freeform, utterly anarchic place, where every rule has been abolished, societal authority has vanished, and madmen and women and spectres are free to roam wherever and however they want through life. Post-apocalyptic scenarios mix with parochial twitch-curtain everyday street scenes twisted beyond recognition. People of indeterminate and every and no sex melt and mingle, laughing and screaming and bleeding. The work comes off like meaningless semi-coagulated short films. With no plot or characterisation, beyond what is right there right now. It’s fascinating, a kind of fashion parade from the teetering oblivion edge, the red carpet to oblivion, countless sloppy seconds, a conjured-up world just one blink or sigh away from permanently melting. Finally, an AI hallucination worth seeing!
@ArchAngelDemon's work is very, very beautiful, and surreal, and utterly not traditional Scottish at all, which is why I love it. It has no grand message to impart, is not trying to be morally didactic in any way. Thankfully. I thought I would ask the artist a load of questions about herself and work, her thoughts on AI and the online AI community. We can learn from the underground up together. Please take this as an absolute beginner’s crash course in the evolving enveloping medium, as destructive and deranged as it can be. It can also be hot, and void-sexy, and fetishistic, and disturbing, Dali wired to the electric soup mains, orgasm cables on repeated fire into burned-out sagging amygdalas, well worth a minute or three of your time in this inattention deficit disorder economy. So without further ado…
Who are you - reel or real name - how old are you - where
are you from?
My name is Polly (@ArchAngelDemons).
I’m 34. Born in Aberdeen, I have lived all over the UK from age 19 with
work. I am now settled up near Oban for the time being.
How did you get started doing AI?
I had been seeing some
really cool images done with AI. I tried a free one, it looked shite but I had
fun playing around with it to get characters and trying out different prompts.
I then realised this free shit was never going to give me what I wanted so I
subscribed to Midjourney and that’s when it really took off.
Do you have a degree in any kind of art form?
No degree. I left
school when I was 15 with average qualifications and did an art portfolio
course in Gallowgate college in Aberdeen. This was meant to lead into
university but I just got into hospitality and later went to school to become a
chef instead, and got a diploma in culinary. Have been a chef ever since - I
did get into art school in Bristol at age 25 to do illustration, but I did one
year and left after losing my Dad suddenly. I wouldn’t mind doing a few courses
though in different areas in the future, like film and textiles.
How long have you been using AI?
Only for the last couple of years.
What do you think of all the horror stories about it?
It depends what horror
stories you mean. If it’s the climate aspect, we can knock on Nestle’s door and
get rid of these crap fizzy drinks if they are worried about the water consumed
per prompt. I think it has positives and negatives for society, but I do worry
we will end up in a Terminator-like situation. In relation to AI art you always
hear the same jargon about “AI stealing real artists work” and “zero skill”, Which
is true to an extent, but once you are immersed in it it’s actually a lot more
complex than just writing a prompt and waiting for an image.
What do you find good or bad about it?
I like the endless
possibilities with layering my art on top of styles I have created with AI and
seeing what happens. It’s been good for learning about storyboards and how a
film would flow. I feel I have a pretty good grasp on how I want things to look
and I usually get the result I want. I think maybe what’s bad about it is
all the nasty stuff you hear, people making porn with photos of you, etc., all
that weird shite should be monitored. I struggle to get blood featured, let
alone make a porno! I do understand people being concerned their jobs are at
risk, but honestly I think there will be a surge in creativity and longing for
a time before technology, so maybe it’s all a good thing and will encourage a
more natural lifestyle.
How long does it take you to make a video?
It can take me a while
to get the base image that you want to animate. You have to keep generating to
get different variations. When I find the ones I like after delving deep into
particular styles I put the image into Kling, where I upload the image and then
write the prompt. Camera angles, lighting, movement, facial expressions etc. It
can take 2 mins or 5 mins to make depending on how long I want it to be.
Usually 5-10 second clips – just gotta hope it comes out well the first couple
of times because it can get a bit expensive. I only really try to use it when I
have a solid idea of what I want.
Your videos seem like playful, creepy, abstract, funny,
disturbing, playful feeling ripples. What sort of affect are you trying to
induce in the modern, image-overloaded viewer?
I want them to be excited, but also a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Also funny, because I don’t like things to be too serious. I’m a lighthearted positive person on the most part, but I am a very sensitive soul. I have had quite a tragic traumatic life so far and I want to process it through art. It has actually helped me a lot to get rid of some mental baggage by generating some crazy imagery from it all.
Who are some of your influences, both inside and outside
AI?
People I meet inspire
me a lot, I’ll see someone on the street and come up with some story for them
or just habits and general wacky ideas that humans have. Animals, pop culture,
current affairs, religion, paganism fashion – I love how PVC and latex looks,
so I feature that a lot in my work. I used to draw what I thought my guardian
Angel looked like and it was a very cheeky young man shaved head, a ned if you
like... (non-educated delinquent for those in the back) Good heart, but
volatile, and I based my whole page on him, My name Archangeldemons is from
this, along with the concept of dark and light within us all.
What programs do you use, and why?
Midjourney, it’s just
the best one I have used for the aesthetic I want. And Kling is just a bit
crisper movement for the videos and can come with speech too. I have only just
recently been exploring the speech, but having lots of fun with it.
Do you think there is any real difference between AI as a
new artistic tool, or do you think people fear and loathe it in the way
that they fear any new medium, like they feared the net around the turn of the
century?
People are scared of their craft going out of fashion or being replaced, because why pay someone to take weeks or months to make something when you can simply generate it in a matter of minutes? I don’t think they have anything to worry about. I think the more AI creeps into everything the more people will turn back to older traditional way of life and reject it. If it was to be turned off tomorrow I wouldn’t be that bothered. It has served me well for the time being, but we will see where this journey goes. I received some backlash from people I know. I don’t have many people I know following me because I don’t like the silent judgement coming from them. It blocks my creative flow, where I find myself dimming my own light for their eyes to cope.
Your images are young, post-apocalyptic, alienated,
drippy, wounded, proud, haughty, arrogant, pained, psychotic, beautiful. They
seem to exude a modern pansexuality, tending towards homosexuality, and
you recently had a video with a female character saying she might as well be
gay. Is sexual definition an anachronism in modern artistic depiction?
Regarding my recent
video, it was in relation to another artist online who I thought was a
homosexual man. Their page is thriving. I found out recently he is actually a
she and not a homosexual. I feel like right now, being just a straight woman
isn’t enough for people, you have to have some kink. Myself I’m mistaken for a
lesbian quite a lot, so really I was mocking this obsession with gender and
sexuality that everyone seems to have, like I can be anything but straight. And
that girl using gay men in her art just seems like an easy way to grow your
followers rather than being her authentic self, which is most likely straight.
But honestly within all of the graphic imagery, I find myself to be wholesome
and becoming more asexual as time goes on in a hyper-sexualised world.
What are some of your favourite films, books, musical
styles? Fan of horror movies at all? Science fiction? The melting reminds me of
the 1986 exploding tramp film Street Trash.
I don’t read enough books. I can’t tell you the last time I read a book. I’m a little bit dyslexic so it can take me a while, but the last book I read was “Under the Skin” by Michel Faber, a Scottish author. It’s about aliens harvesting human meat, set in the Highlands and Glasgow. They made an arthouse film of it, with Scarlett Johannson picking up hitchhikers and luring them to their death. I love both film and book both. They’re different visually and the soundtrack to the film is great. I went to see a live performance of it in Bristol. I also love Natural Born Killers, one of my favourite Romances, and it has some great quotes about dark and light in there. But I love that fast paced cartoon style of filming. I like a lot of 80s gore films like Basket Case and Frankenhooker, things like that. I really like Lyn Richmond’s films too. I love stop motion animation. I recently bought Mad God by Phil Tippett. It has taken 30 years to make and it is brilliant, but you do feel bad for the puppets. Also was obsessed with puppets as a child and always played with toys and illustrated stories, until I got to about 13. Around then, metal was a big thing and I used to just watch music videos and MTV, then would download music in LimeWire obsessively, trying to find the song I needed! I went through that awkward age with Marilyn Manson plastered all over my room. But as I’m older I’m really into a vast range of music. I bought myself some decks to mix so I have been enjoying that hobby recently. I did some promotional artwork for a night at Tresor in Berlin last year for a collective called Enigma music, I went over for the event and it was great. I love the techno scene and Berlin is great for a stomp. Hope to do more things like that.
Your colour scheme is not very historically Scottish at
all, and neither is your subject matter. Why don't your characters speak
with a Scottish accent, and why isn't there any real Scottish imagery in your
work?
I plan on making
Scottish accents. The ones I have had sound crap though, really cringe. I’m
trying to create my own voices on Kling but like I say I’m just figuring that
out. I have a few in there with references to Aberdeen and east coast fishing
towns and I feature a lot of landscapes that are inspired from what’s around
me. If I want a certain look in a character I usually prompt ‘Ugly Scottish’ as
a description, because otherwise it just looks a bit too pristine. It’s like AI
knows we’re a bit rough and ready.
There are often isolated, seemingly alienated-yet-proud
characters in your moving portraits, your familiar alien cameos.
Autobiographical? The world in these films seemed blasted, destroyed, but also
sometimes suffocatingly parochial, slightly retro, a fusion of old and new.
They are mostly
autobiographical, I’ve been dealing with post-traumatic stress for the last 4
years after the loss of JP, my housemate whom I lived with in Manchester. He
took his own life in our flat and I found him after work. The shock of that
sent me off the rails (as it would) and I spiralled out control with drink and
drugs. I had a terrible rash all over my face from the cortisol (I feature a
lot of women with bad skin). I looked and felt like Hell. It’s only just now
I’m actually starting to heal from that, but a lot of my art is expressing the
rollercoaster of emotions I’ve been battling silently. I have one in particular
called “jaw clencher”, because my dentist made me a fancy mouth guard to wear
to stop me smashing my teeth up! AI has really helped me express myself
fast which has made the healing process more fun I would say. A lot of my life
has been quite tragic but also very exciting, so my work is a sort of porthole
into different aspects of dealing with grief and the afterlife and aftermath of
losing someone, for now. I’m less biographical now, which probably means it’s a
new chapter.
What do you do as a job?
I am a chef by trade.
Started when I was about 19 and have always worked in restaurants. Maybe one
day get a food van if all else fails with my artistry. At the moment due to my
stress levels I’m just cleaning.
Read part 2 here: https://whorattledyourcage.blogspot.com/2026/04/electronic-blood-visions-part-2.html
Comments
Post a Comment