Amongst a number of AI software that has been launched for the design and visual content, Midjourney is one of them. It is an application and artificial intelligence that produces images in response to text input. A text description can be entered and the software produces possible imaginations that can progressively be refined. Â
Filippo Nassetti, an artist and generative designer reimagined old paintings of famous figurative artists by adding spaceships to them. He says “I knew that this AI has a great ability to transfer stylistic features of a visual language. Through training on a very large database of images, Midjourney learnt the visual language of Bosch, Canaletto, Piranesi, …. and is able to produce original content that mimics it.”
“I wanted to test the extent of its skills by asking it to produce images that included objects that artists from the past could have never seen or even imagined – like a spaceship, an artefact that would be completely alien to their scenarios and landscapes. The outcome was stunning: not only the visual language and atmospherics are convincingly transferred, but the shape and materiality of the spaceships changes in relation to each artist. They are not simply painted in the style of these artists, but designed as such.”
A Canaletto with high detailed vessels flying over a misty Venetian lagoon, a Piranesi drawing that shows elevations and sections, a Goya with people inside a light aircraft, a deconstructed Boccini, and a Turner where the objects blur with the rich turbulent skies were all images that were produced by Midjourney.
“Beyond this collection of images, I think this is possibly a very strong tool for concept design” adds Nassetti. “It opens very new territories for art and design exploration, while challenging many existing ideas, such as our conception of authoriality and copyright, the relationship between concept and development, the role of technique. I decided to produce these images to discuss the ongoing transformations, and new horizons.”
All images produced by Filippo Nassetti using Midjourney AI.
