To make each image, Crespo utilizes an AI to generate the rest of the animal based on what body part has just finished rendering. As a result, each organism is surrealistically merging and flowing into others at weird points while attempting to duplicate museum-style records of specimens. I’m really fascinated by these images because of how normal they look at first glance, but then how unnerving they become with each new detail. These pieces also remind me of the online project This Person Does Not Exist (link here), which generates images of faces based on AI and machine learning algorithms, with the catch that none of the people shown actually exist. Sometimes the pictures generated look wrong in a particular corner (the AI doesn’t render detailed backgrounds very well), but lately it has been very realistic.
Link to artwork here.
DSGN 264-402 | Fall 2020 